England have hit back in Australia. Two days after being bowled out for 131 in Perth, they beat Australia by 135 runs in the second one-day international in Adelaide on Sunday, levelling the three-match series at 1-1.

Tom Banton’s 121 led England to 355-6, the highest total they have ever made in a one-day international in Australia. Gus Atkinson then took a career-best 4-28, and Australia were all out for 220 with more than five overs left.

The series will be decided in Hobart on Wednesday, with play starting at 03:30 GMT.

Banton survives a helmet blow to make 121

Australia won the toss and chose to bowl. England lost Ben Duckett early, slashing to point for 9.

Banton was struck on the helmet by a Spencer Johnson bouncer when he had 10. He batted on to make his second ODI century from 99 balls, and his 137-run partnership with Joe Root, who made 62, gave England control. Banton was eventually caught at deep square leg.

Banton is only in the side because Jacob Bethell injured his knee, and he keeps making it count. In his last nine innings he has two hundreds and four fifties.

“I think the most important thing is getting the win,” he told Test Match Special. “Coming here today if we didn’t win, the Hobart match wouldn’t have mattered.” He also called his hundred a “very proud moment.”

Cox and Jacks cut loose at the death

Harry Brook went for 5, dragging a ramp shot onto his stumps. England were 245-4 after 40 overs.

Jordan Cox, keeping wicket in place of Jos Buttler, and Will Jacks then added 102. Cox hit 67 off 49 balls, including a reverse scoop for four off Xavier Bartlett, and Jacks finished on 54 not out from 40. England scored 110 runs from the last 10 overs, and Atkinson hit two sixes in the final over.

Atkinson rips through Australia’s top order

The chase was over almost as soon as it began. Australia were 29-4 inside seven overs.

Sonny Baker, picked in place of Jamie Overton, struck first when Root dived at slip to catch Mitchell Marsh for 2. Atkinson removed Travis Head for 7, the second match in a row he has dismissed the opener, and then had Josh Inglis and Cooper Connolly caught behind.

Cameron Green, with 64, and Matt Renshaw, with 63, rebuilt the innings, helped by England dropping four catches. Green was stumped after the ball bounced off Cox’s shin onto the stumps.

Sam Curran then took two wickets in two balls, bowling Jack Edwards with a slow, looping “moon ball.” Liam Dawson, picked ahead of Adil Rashid again, took 2-41. Jofra Archer finished the match by knocking out Johnson’s middle stump, one ball after Baker had dropped him.

Records and a much-needed response

The figures show how big the turnaround was. This was England’s first one-day win in Adelaide for 15 years. It ended a run of seven defeats to Australia at the ground across all formats, and six straight 50-over losses to Australia away from home. By runs, it is England’s third-biggest one-day win over Australia.

It also follows a difficult few weeks. Last month England failed to defend 430 against Sri Lanka, and they lost to Pakistan in Rawalpindi and Lahore.

Former Australia batter and coach Darren Lehmann did not hold back. “England were too good. They have bounced back from Perth,” he said. “Australia were outplayed in all departments apart from the fielding.”

Sources: BBC Sport match report and live coverage, Australia v England second one-day international, Adelaide (November 15, 2026).

Australia have done the double. Hours after the Jillaroos retained the women’s crown, the Kangaroos beat New Zealand 32-12 in the men’s Rugby League World Cup final at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Sunday night to win the trophy for a fourth straight tournament.

Winger Jack Bostock and second-rower Liam Martin each scored twice in a five-try performance. A crowd of 52,461 watched Australia take charge early and never lose control.

A disastrous start for the Kiwis

New Zealand’s problems began before a tackle had been made. Jamayne Isaako’s opening kick-off flew dead on the full, giving Australia a penalty at halfway.

The Kangaroos needed barely two minutes to score from it. Hooker Harry Grant dummied one way from the ruck and fed Martin, who drove over Kodi Nikorima to touch down. NRL.com called it the quickest try in World Cup history. Cameron Munster, not usually Australia’s first-choice goalkicker, converted for 6-0.

McLean replies, then Australia pull away

The Kiwis responded on 12 minutes. Casey McLean finished a move built by Isaiah Papali’i and Nikorima for his ninth try of the tournament. Isaako’s conversion lifted him to 227 Test points, passing Shaun Johnson’s 225 as New Zealand’s all-time record.

That was as close as it got. Bostock restored the lead midway through the half, gathering a tap-on from Bradman Best for his eighth try of the World Cup. A Munster penalty, after Ronaldo Mulitalo was pulled up for an escort, made it 12-6 on 23 minutes.

Best then turned the half. He chased down Kiwi halfback Jahrome Hughes from behind and knocked the ball loose near halfway, and in the very next set he stepped past Dane Gagai to score himself. It was 18-6.

New Zealand wasted a chance to reply when Erin Clark was held up on the last tackle 10 metres out. In the 38th minute Jacob Preston ripped the ball from Naufahu Whyte, and Martin finished the set off a short ball from Tom Dearden for his second try. Australia went in 24-6 up.

Walsh magic kills the contest

Any hope of a Kiwi fightback ended within two minutes of the restart. Gagai made an error, and fullback Reece Walsh slipped past three defenders before sending Tom Trbojevic over for 28-6.

New Zealand thought they had pulled one back with 22 minutes left when Mulitalo came down with a high ball over the line. Replays showed he had lost the ball in the air before regathering, and the try was not given. Papali’i did score in the 66th minute, following up a Nikorima grubber kick, and Isaako’s goal made it 28-12. Briton Nikora’s error straight from the restart ended the momentum.

Bostock had the final say. Best’s flick pass sent him in at the left corner for his second try and a 32-12 lead late on. He was named player of the match.

Tedesco’s farewell

There was a final moment for James Tedesco. Coach Kevin Walters sent the veteran fullback on with six minutes left. He captained Australia to the 2021 World Cup title, which was played in 2022, and this is expected to be his last Test.

“Well done, Kevvy,” Tedesco’s Roosters coach Trent Robinson said on the Seven broadcast.

Captain Isaah Yeo lifted the trophy about 100 days after rupturing a pectoral muscle, an injury that put his place in the final in doubt. Up front he, Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and Cameron Murray gave Australia control of the middle, which let Grant and Dearden take over.

An extended dynasty

Australia’s grip on the competition is now tighter than ever. The Kangaroos have won 23 World Cup matches in a row and four straight titles: in Manchester in 2013, Brisbane in 2017, Manchester again in 2022 and now Brisbane once more. New Zealand remain the last side to beat them in a final, back in 2008.

Sunday was a sweep for Australia. Earlier at the same ground, the Jillaroos beat the Kiwi Ferns 34-10 to win a fourth straight women’s title.

Sources: NRL.com match report by Martin Lenehan, Nine and Sydney Morning Herald coverage of the Rugby League World Cup final, Australia v New Zealand (November 15, 2026).

Huge waves battered the California coast on Saturday, flooding streets, closing piers and beaches from the Oregon border to Los Angeles County, and sending 50-foot walls of water into the famous big-wave break at Mavericks.

Offshore buoys recorded the largest waves in about a decade, and forecasters warned that the danger is not over: more powerful swells are heading for the coast from Sunday night.

50 to 60 feet at Mavericks

The swell peaked on Saturday morning. Rachel Kennedy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office, told the Los Angeles Times that waves topped 25 feet along much of the coast, with “more localized” sets of 50 to 60 feet at Mavericks, the surf spot off Pillar Point near Half Moon Bay, about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

Big-wave surfers from around the world had raced to Mavericks for the swell. Mark Sponsler, who runs the forecasting site Stormsurf, estimated that the biggest waves there were above 50 feet and possibly close to 60.

A buoy off Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, measured a significant wave height of 31.2 feet on Saturday morning. Significant wave height is the average of the highest third of waves, so individual waves can be much bigger. Kennedy said it was the buoy’s highest reading since 2015; the San Francisco Chronicle reported that only a December 2015 swell, by less than a foot, had been larger in three decades of records.

Pacifica streets flooded

Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, was among the hardest-hit towns. Waves repeatedly broke over the seawall, and roughly every half-hour an especially large set pushed water hundreds of feet inland, according to the Chronicle. Floodwater nearly a foot deep covered part of Highway 1, and residents filled sandbags to protect their homes.

Crowds of onlookers gathered despite the warnings. Several spectators were knocked off their feet by a sneaker wave in a parking lot outside the City Council Chambers, including a mother carrying a toddler, who were helped up by bystanders.

“The beach is not your friend this weekend,” Kennedy said. “You’re putting both yourself and any rescuers in danger if you go on the beach at all.”

Santa Cruz evacuation warnings

In Santa Cruz County, about 270 homes were placed under evacuation warnings, The New York Times reported. Warnings covered low-lying areas including Capitola Village, the Las Olas and Beach Drive neighborhoods of Rio Del Mar, Platform Beach, Potbelly Beach and New Brighton State Beach.

County spokesman Jason Hoppin said no evacuation orders had been issued as of midday Saturday. “We’re seeing some minor flooding, but our infrastructure is holding up so far,” he said.

The City of Santa Cruz closed all city beaches and the Santa Cruz Wharf from Friday night. The wharf was badly damaged by a similar swell in December 2024.

Piers closed in Southern California

The swell reached the length of the state. Manhattan Beach closed its pier, a rare step for one of Los Angeles County’s best-known attractions. The Pismo Beach Pier in San Luis Obispo County was also shut.

Forecasters expected surf of 6 to 9 feet in Los Angeles County, building to 8 to 12 feet, with a high surf advisory in effect through Tuesday afternoon. San Luis Obispo County was forecast to see waves of 10 to 15 feet, building to 18 to 25 feet. Farther north, thousands of people lined clifftop viewpoints on the Sonoma coast to watch the surf.

“No selfie of the crashing waves is worth losing your life,” Roger Gass, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Monterey, told The New York Times.

Why the waves are so big

The swell was generated by a storm with hurricane-force winds in the northeast Pacific, near the Gulf of Alaska. Its long wave period, around 19 seconds between crests, meant the waves carried exceptional energy and could surge much farther up beaches than people expect.

The timing is unusual. California’s biggest swells typically arrive between December and January. Forecasters have linked the active pattern to this year’s El Niño.

More waves coming

The first swell was easing by Saturday afternoon, but Kennedy warned it would not be the last. “We are expecting to get a couple more northwesterly swells this week because the Pacific is so active right now,” she said, adding that there “might be subsequent rounds of damaging waves.”

Forecasters expect the next large swell to arrive late Sunday into Monday. Officials are urging residents and visitors to stay off beaches, rocks, jetties and seawalls, never turn their backs on the ocean, and call 911 rather than enter the water if someone is swept away.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle (via The San Francisco Standard), The Press Democrat and Santa Cruz Sentinel reporting on the California high surf (November 13–15, 2026).

Australia are world champions again. The Jillaroos beat New Zealand 34-10 in the Women’s Rugby League World Cup final at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Sunday, winning the trophy for a fourth consecutive tournament.

The final was effectively over by half-time. Australia scored six tries in a 35-minute opening half to lead 34-6, and winger Jaime Chapman scored three of them.

Chapman hat-trick sinks the Kiwi Ferns

Chapman opened the scoring inside three minutes, finishing in the left corner after Australia moved the ball wide. Jesse Southwell converted from the touchline.

Second-rower Shaylee Bent crossed three minutes later for 12-0. Chapman then dived in at the corner for her second try after a quarter of an hour, and Southwell landed another difficult conversion for 18-0.

Centre Jessica Sergis broke through for a long-range try under the posts on 20 minutes. New Zealand felt the pass that put her through was forward, but the try stood and Australia led 24-0.

Chapman completed her hat-trick just before the half-hour, breaking a tackle and running around 60 metres to score. Fullback Tamika Upton added a sixth try in the closing minutes of the half after quick passing with Abbi Church down the right.

New Zealand never got close enough

The Kiwi Ferns’ only first-half points came on 23 minutes. Back-to-back penalties took them into Australian territory, and reserve prop Shannon Mato forced her way over. Five-eighth Chantay Kiria-Ratu converted.

Australia dominated possession and made far fewer tackling errors. By the final 15 minutes, BBC Sport counted 33 missed tackles by New Zealand against just 10 by Australia.

A scrappy, scoreless second half

The second half was a very different contest. New Zealand defended much better and the Jillaroos made a string of handling errors, many of them from high kicks, as the hot and humid Brisbane afternoon took its toll.

Australia captain Isabelle Kelly produced two important try-saving tackles. In one of them she bundled winger Mackenzie Wiki into touch just short of the line.

Wiki eventually scored on the final siren, pouncing after Kelly spilled a chip kick, to make the final score 34-10. Australia had already won the game.

Injuries late on

The second half was also physical. New Zealand captain Raecene McGregor went off for a head injury assessment after a clash of heads with Australia’s Simaima Taufa, who carried on with a large swelling over her right eye.

Kiwi Ferns fullback Apii Nicholls limped off with an apparent hamstring injury with about five minutes left.

A dynasty extended

The win extends Australia’s control of the women’s game. They have now won four Women’s World Cups in a row, while New Zealand, the tournament’s early powerhouse, have not lifted the trophy since 2008.

The final was played over 70 minutes, the match length used in Australia’s NRL Women’s Premiership.

For Chapman, the final topped off an outstanding tournament. Her opening try was her 11th of the World Cup, and the two that followed took her tally to 13.

Men’s final next

There was little time to celebrate in Brisbane. The men’s final, also Australia against New Zealand, follows at the same stadium with kick-off at 08:35 GMT. The Kangaroos and Kiwis also met in the tournament’s opening match in Sydney a month earlier.

Sources: BBC Sport live coverage of the Women’s Rugby League World Cup final, and Sporting News live blog, Australia v New Zealand (November 15, 2026).

Italy’s privacy watchdog has fined Meta €805 million (about $887 million, or £670 million). It found that a Facebook feature looked through Android users’ photo galleries without their specific consent.

The Italian Data Protection Authority, known as the Garante, announced the penalty on Saturday. The regulator says the Facebook app did not clearly tell around 20 million smartphone users in Italy that it could access their photos and videos. Meta has been given 60 days to change how the feature works.

The fine is one of the biggest ever imposed by an Italian authority on a technology company. Meta told the BBC it would appeal.

The feature at the centre of the case

The case concerns a Facebook for Android tool that pulls pictures and clips from the phone’s gallery and offers them as possible posts while people scroll. It has been available since 2023 and, according to the regulator, was switched on by default.

The Garante’s problem was with the permission behind it. Facebook asked for gallery access via one blanket permission spanning the entire app and a number of unrelated functions. The notice shown before the request was generic. It said the permission would enable other features, but it did not explain that one of them was gallery suggestions.

Once a user grants full access, the app can generally read the entire photo archive, and usually with no time limit. That is why the Garante treated it seriously. Italian privacy law, based on EU ePrivacy rules, treats the contents of a smartphone as part of a person’s private life. Reading what is stored there requires informed consent, even if nothing leaves the device.

What Meta must do now

The regulator has given Meta 60 days to:

• switch gallery suggestions off by default, including for users who already granted the permission;
• ask for consent through a separate, specific request that explains what the feature does, that it uses the gallery, and how to turn it off.

Meta must also report back to the Garante on its first steps within 30 days, and on the measures it has put in place within 90 days.

How the regulator reached €805m

The penalty is roughly 0.47% of Meta’s worldwide turnover. The Garante said it weighed “the high number of people affected” and that the problem was “still ongoing” for users who had not updated the app or who had already agreed to it.

The watchdog also pointed to “Meta’s lack of co-operation”, along with the length of the breach and a previous enforcement action against the company in 2019. Changes Meta made after the investigation began, which started in 2025, were counted in its favour, but the regulator judged them late and limited.

Meta: ‘We strongly disagree’

Meta rejected the findings. “We strongly disagree with the [regulator’s] assessment of the facts, its application of the law, and the disproportionate level of the fine,” the company told the BBC.

“This is a straightforward feature which helps people post photos and videos to Facebook. People must give permission on their device before it can operate, and they can change this permission at any time via their settings.”

The AI question left open

The decision does not settle one of the biggest concerns users have: whether photos in their galleries were used to train artificial intelligence. The investigation did not examine that, and Meta denies that gallery content was used this way.

The Garante has, however, kept the right to look separately at a newer feature launched in 2026, which processes gallery content in the cloud. Privacy campaigners are likely to watch that closely, as Meta and other tech companies are under pressure to find more data for their AI models.

Italy’s regulator has a history of taking on big tech over AI and data. In 2023 it became the first Western regulator to temporarily block ChatGPT, and in December 2024 it fined ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, €15 million over how it handled personal data.

A tough run for Meta

The Italian fine follows an even bigger blow last month. According to the BBC, a US judge in New Mexico ordered Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion after finding it had spent years misleading the public about how it handled Facebook users’ data.

The Italian order applies only to Meta’s users in Italy. For Android users elsewhere, it is a reminder to check what the Facebook app is allowed to see. In the phone’s settings, open the app’s permissions and look at its access to photos and videos.

Sources: BBC News; DigitBin; TownPress (November 14, 2026).

Terry Devlin picked the perfect moment for his first goal for Northern Ireland. His curling 25-yard strike gave Michael O’Neill’s side a 1-0 win over Ukraine at Windsor Park on Saturday night and left them one point away from the top tier of the Nations League.

The win sends Northern Ireland back to the top of League B Group 2 with 11 points from five games. A draw in Hungary on Tuesday would take them up to League A, which would be a first for the country.

Even if they lose in Budapest, they can finish no lower than second. That guarantees a promotion play-off and a place among the second seeds in next month’s Euro 2028 qualifying draw.

Devlin’s moment

The pressure was on before kick-off. Hungary had beaten Georgia 2-0 earlier on Saturday to go top, and Northern Ireland had drawn their previous two home games in the group 0-0.

The breakthrough came in the 68th minute. Northern Ireland played a short corner along the edge of the penalty area and the ball reached Devlin about 25 yards out. The 23-year-old Portsmouth midfielder curled it past Ukraine goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin, who did not move.

“I’m absolutely buzzing to score my first international goal and for it to be the winner,” Devlin told BBC Sport NI. “It’s a quality I have, to score goals from outside the box, and I’ve got another one tonight.”

Long-range goals have become something of a habit for the former Glentoran player. He is Portsmouth’s top scorer in the Championship this season.

Charles keeps the clean sheet going

Northern Ireland thought they had scored in the 23rd minute. Isaac Price’s shot deflected off Ethan Galbraith and fell to Jamie Donley, who finished. However, the video assistant referee ruled it out for offside.

Ukraine had protested furiously because defender Illia Zabarnyi was off the pitch receiving treatment when the ball went in. The decision calmed things down. Trubin then made a double save from Donley and Shea Charles, and at the other end Pierce Charles stopped Olexiy Kashchuk’s attempt to squeeze the ball through his legs.

The biggest moment for the Northern Ireland goalkeeper came in the 90th minute. Kashchuk got behind the defence and cut the ball back to Anderlecht striker Danylo Sikan, who looked certain to equalise from close range. Charles, who plays for Queens Park Rangers, reacted brilliantly to block it with his feet.

That save kept Northern Ireland’s fifth straight clean sheet. BBC Sport says they are still the only team in the competition who have not conceded a goal.

O’Neill’s selection gamble pays off

O’Neill was without injured defenders Daniel Ballard and Conor Bradley. Rather than simply moving captain Trai Hume to right wing-back, he played Hume in a deeper midfield role, which made room for Devlin in the starting line-up.

“We knew we would get a tough game and we got that,” O’Neill said. “We got on top and were the dominant team in the second half.” He called Devlin’s goal “a great hit” and praised Charles’s late save.

“I’m delighted for Terry Devlin. He has worked so hard to get his chance,” the manager added.

The performance also showed how much this young team has learned. Their last home game, a goalless draw with Georgia, turned into an end-to-end scramble that frustrated O’Neill. This time Northern Ireland stayed patient, controlled the second half and waited for their chance.

After the final whistle, the players did a lap of the pitch as fans sang “We’re not Brazil, we’re Northern Ireland”.

What’s next: Hungary away

Northern Ireland go to Hungary on Tuesday for the final group game, knowing a point will be enough. They beat Ukraine 3-0 away in October, and they have not conceded a goal in five group games.

They will be without Donley, who is suspended after being booked for dissent for the second time in the group.

Sources: BBC Sport live coverage and match report (November 14, 2026).

Luis de la Fuente has rejected any suggestion that racism is a problem in Spain. The Spain coach was speaking on the eve of a Nations League showdown with England in Madrid, and he had a message for his opposite number.

“What I’d tell you, and you can tell Thomas, is that in Spain, there’s no racism,” De la Fuente said on Saturday, according to BBC Sport. “Just like that, crystal clear. Just like in England, there’s no racism in Spain. We aren’t racist, any of us.”

He was replying to a question about Thomas Tuchel, who had said on Friday that he would go over Uefa’s anti-racism protocol with the England squad before the game.

What Tuchel said

Tuchel’s comments on Friday were cautious. He said England might “take our five minutes” to explain the protocol to players, given what had happened in the past. He added that his team would respond “on the pitch” if anything happened.

By Saturday’s pre-match news conference, the England head coach seemed keen to calm things down. “I never talk about racism in Spain,” he said. He explained that he had answered a hypothetical question about what England would do, and pointed out that a protocol exists for exactly that situation.

Tuchel said he expected a friendly atmosphere, with the crowd naturally behind Spain. He hoped football would “bring people together and not divide people.”

Why the question was asked

The question was not random. Sunday’s game will be England’s first in the Spanish capital since November 2004. A friendly at the Bernabeu that night is still remembered for monkey chants aimed at England’s black players.

The issue has come up again more recently. Last month the Spanish Football Federation was fined and told to shut part of a stadium after fans aimed Islamophobic and xenophobic chants at Muslims during Spain’s match against Egypt in Barcelona.

In La Liga, Real Madrid forward Vinicius Jr has become one of football’s loudest voices against racism after being targeted repeatedly by fans. In 2024, three Valencia supporters received eight-month prison sentences for racially abusing the Brazilian during a match. It was a landmark case in Spain.

Uefa’s protocol gives referees three steps: pause the game, take the teams off the pitch, and finally abandon the match if the abuse continues.

Rice: ‘It’s shocking we still have it’

England midfielder Declan Rice spoke from experience. He said he had faced racist abuse in Montenegro and Bulgaria, and on those occasions England followed the protocol and left the pitch.

“The times we are in now, 2026, there should never be racism in football,” Rice said. “It’s shocking we still have it in the game today.” He added that any abuse of a player from either side would be “a horrible mark on football.”

The football: top spot on the line

Beyond the row, there is plenty at stake on the pitch. Sunday’s match decides who finishes first in League A Group 3.

Spain come into it as world champions after winning the World Cup in the summer, and they also beat England in the Euro 2024 final. England took third place at the World Cup, having gone out to Argentina in the last four.

De la Fuente said both nations are now at the top of world football. However, he argued that neither could simply copy the other’s style. “I prefer the Spanish model,” he said, adding that England’s approach was “very good, but you have to have that type of player.”

He also said opponents are now “much more aggressive” against Spain because of their success. In a dig at the Premier League’s spending, he claimed Spanish players were “very cheap” compared with English ones, and in his view better.

On Lamine Yamal, who arrived late to the squad after a knee problem that dominated the build-up earlier in the week, De la Fuente gave little away. “We will see if he is a starter, but if he comes out, it’s because he’s fit to play,” he said. That followed his angry response to suggestions the Barcelona forward was getting special treatment, which he dismissed as “lies”.

Spain and England kick off in Madrid on Sunday, November 15.

Sources: BBC Sport (November 14, 2026).

Will Joseph waited four years for a second England cap. When it came, he made up for lost time, scoring five tries as England crushed Japan 78-15 at Twickenham on Saturday.

The 24-year-old Gloucester back, picked on the wing, equalled England’s record for tries in a single Test. England scored 13 in total against a Japan side coached by a familiar face: Eddie Jones, the man who gave Joseph his debut back in 2022.

“It kills me that Will Joseph, I gave him his first cap, he scores five tries against me. Now that’s not being very loyal, is it?” Jones joked afterwards, BBC Sport reported. “He’s a great kid. He always was going to be a good player.”

Five tries, one record

Joseph wasted no time. He crossed for his first try after around a minute, completed a hat-trick by the 19th minute, and kept going. His fourth, finished with a cartwheeling dive over the line, showed how much he was enjoying himself.

The five-try haul puts him alongside four other England players: Dan Lambert in 1907, Rory Underwood in 1989, Josh Lewsey in 2003 and Henry Arundell in 2023.

Arundell was Joseph’s team-mate at London Irish, and the two were teenage tourists together in Australia in 2022. Arundell’s five came against Chile at the 2023 Rugby World Cup.

“It has been a challenging four years, but I have enjoyed the journey to get back here,” Joseph said. “I have had a taste for it now and I can’t wait to do it again.”

A long road back

Joseph’s first cap came as a last-minute replacement in the second Test of that 2022 tour. Then his career stalled.

London Irish went bust in 2023, forcing him to leave his boyhood club for Harlequins, where he struggled for fitness and minutes. He also lost the hearing in his left ear to an autoimmune condition.

A move to Gloucester has turned things around. He has been in outstanding form this season as an elusive, offloading threat, and with Immanuel Feyi-Waboso injured and out of the autumn series, Borthwick handed him a chance on the wing.

Borthwick’s England find their rhythm

The result was England’s fourth win in a row, following a run of five straight defeats. Joseph was not the only one to stand out.

Saracens lock George Martin, back after a 14-month injury lay-off, led the way in carries and tackles. Prop Ellis Genge and captain Maro Itoje were both influential up front, while centre Max Ojomoh kept finding gaps in Japan’s midfield.

“The team is really starting to play well,” Borthwick told BBC Radio 5 Live, praising England’s speed in attack and their balance between passing and kicking. He also highlighted the atmosphere created by a younger-than-usual crowd, with junior tickets on sale for £15.

That atmosphere did not suit everyone. Jones had complained during the week about the stadium’s big-screen prompts telling fans to make more noise, and he looked unimpressed when they appeared again on Saturday. Jones spent seven years in charge of England at Twickenham.

Next up: the All Blacks

The test gets much harder next Saturday, when England face New Zealand. The All Blacks will be smarting after losing 35-28 to Wales in Cardiff earlier on Saturday, Wales’s first win over them since 1953.

Borthwick is waiting on the fitness of Ollie Chessum, Seb Atkinson and George Furbank before he picks his side. He will also have to decide whether Joseph, who has five tries against Japan but has never faced a top-tier side, gets the chance to show he can do it against the best.

Sources: BBC Sport (November 14, 2026).

SpaceX has caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket with its launch tower for the first time. On Saturday afternoon in South Texas, the tower’s giant mechanical arms closed around the returning spacecraft, known as Ship 42, after almost a full day in orbit.

The catch came at Starbase, near the US-Mexico border, at about 21:20 GMT on November 14. The BBC called it a “picture perfect” success. No upper stage of any rocket had been recovered this way before. The arms are nicknamed “chopsticks”, and the tower itself “Mechazilla”.

It was a sharp turnaround for Flight 15, the 15th Starship test. Just over 22 hours earlier, the mission’s Super Heavy booster had been destroyed after it abandoned its own landing attempt.

How the Ship came home

Ship 42 lifted off on top of Super Heavy from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase on Friday, November 13, at about 22:47 GMT. That was the late afternoon of Friday local time, and the early hours of Saturday in India.

The upper stage reached orbit, only the second time a Starship has done so. It then released 26 of SpaceX’s new Starlink V3 internet satellites. One Starship can carry up to 60 of them, according to the company. Its Starlink network already has more than 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

The Ship spent about 22 hours in space and circled the planet roughly 14 times. Then it came back through the atmosphere, which is a much harder ride than the booster’s few minutes of flight. It had to survive the heat of re-entry from orbital speed before steering back to the tower that launched it.

On SpaceX’s broadcast, communications manager Kate Tice said every team had declared itself ready for the attempt. Coverage of the landing showed the vehicle slowing to a hover beside the tower, then easing in between the arms, which held it in place.

A day earlier: the booster explodes

Flight 15 was the first Starship test to try to recover both halves of the rocket. The first half did not go to plan.

The upgraded Super Heavy booster separated from the Ship and headed back towards Starbase for its own tower catch. During its landing burn, the attempt was called off and the booster was diverted out over the Gulf of Mexico. It burst into a fireball just above the water about six and a half minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot first put the abort down to a guidance, navigation and control (GNC) problem. On Saturday he corrected that account. He said the GNC system had actually done its job by triggering the abort, because the booster “was not in the place that it was supposed to be.” SpaceX has not yet given a full explanation for why the booster was off position.

Super Heavy boosters have been caught by the tower on earlier flights. This was the first recovery attempt with the newer, upgraded version of the booster.

Why the catch is a big deal

SpaceX wants Starship to work like an airliner: land, refuel and fly again within hours, instead of throwing away expensive hardware after every launch. Tower catches are central to that plan. Landing straight back on the launch mount removes the need for landing legs and drone ships, and puts the vehicle where it can be turned around fastest.

Until Saturday, only half of that system had been shown to work. The Ship is the harder half to recover. It carries the heat shield that takes the full force of re-entry, and it has to come back from orbit rather than from a few minutes of suborbital flight.

There is a lot riding on it. Starlink is SpaceX’s main money-maker, and the company needs a cheap, reusable Starship to launch the heavier V3 satellites in large numbers. NASA has chosen Starship as the lander for its Artemis programme, which is targeting a crewed Moon landing in 2028. Elon Musk has also long described Starship as the vehicle that will one day carry people to Mars.

The rocket matters well beyond engineering, too. SpaceX is also planning $74 billion of AI supercomputing campuses at Starbase and in Arizona. And reports say it is in advanced merger talks with Tesla. A Starship that can fly and land over and over again supports the value investors place on the company.

Disruption on the ground

The launch also caused knock-on effects far from Texas. CNBC reported that Hawaii’s Department of Transportation temporarily paused some West Coast flights on Friday because of the risk of debris from the launch.

That was separate from the nationwide FAA ground stop on Friday, which was caused by a telecommunications failure rather than the rocket. That order has since been lifted.

What comes next

There is still a lot to do before Starship lands astronauts on the Moon. NASA’s plan depends on SpaceX showing it can transfer large amounts of propellant between Starships in orbit, a technique that has never been tried at this scale. Each lunar landing will need a series of tanker flights.

The next tests are likely to focus on getting the upgraded booster back to the tower, and then on reflying recovered hardware. For now, SpaceX has something it has been working towards for years: a Starship upper stage that went to orbit, came back, and was caught by the tower it launched from.

Sources: BBC News live coverage; CNBC; Space.com live updates; India Today (November 13–14, 2026).

Wales Beat New Zealand 35-28 to End 73-Year Wait for All Blacks Win

For 73 years, every Wales team that faced New Zealand walked off beaten. On Saturday in Cardiff, Steve Tandy’s side finally broke that sequence, beating the All Blacks 35-28 in a nine-try Nations Championship match that ended with players and supporters in tears at the Principality Stadium.

The result ends a run of 34 consecutive defeats to New Zealand stretching back to 1953. Some bookmakers had priced a Wales win at 20-1 before kick-off.

Two tries in six minutes

Wales could hardly have started better. Inside the opening six minutes, scrum-half Tomos Williams pounced on a Louis Rees-Zammit chip to score, and captain Dewi Lake crashed over from a flat Williams pass after a well-drilled forward move. It was the first time Wales had ever led New Zealand by 14 points.

Prop Archie Griffin added a third try, his second in two weeks, to make it 21-7. But New Zealand, captained for the first time by full-back Beauden Barrett in his 149th Test, worked their way back. Scrum-half Cortez Ratima, number eight Wallace Sititi and wing Fehi Fineanganofo all scored, and Richie Mo’unga’s conversions had the sides level at 21-21 at half-time.

Wales strike again after the break

Many Wales fans will have feared the familiar pattern of the All Blacks pulling away in the second half. Instead, Wales repeated their first-half blitz. Williams’s long passing created tries for centre Eddie James and then Rees-Zammit within eight minutes of the restart, and Sam Costelow converted both to complete a perfect five from five with the boot.

Five tries is the most Wales have ever scored in a Test against New Zealand. At 35-21, the home side had a cushion, but flanker Peter Lakai’s try cut the gap to seven points with plenty of time left.

Holding the line

The final quarter was won by Wales’s defence. Three times New Zealand carried the ball over the Wales line, and three times Welsh defenders got underneath to hold it up. Replacement prop Gareth Thomas stopped Sititi, flanker James Botham did the same to hooker Asafo Aumua, and replacement fly-half Dan Edwards combined with Jac Morgan to deny the All Blacks a third time. Morgan, lock Dafydd Jenkins and replacement number eight Taine Plumtree, who won two key turnovers, were central to a defensive effort that Barrett later compared to running into “a Welsh brick wall.”

What the result means

Wales had won the first three matches in this fixture, in 1905, 1935 and 1953. Some of the greatest players in Welsh rugby history, including Sir Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Phil Bennett, JPR Williams, Shane Williams and Alun Wyn Jones, never beat New Zealand in a Wales shirt.

The 55,152 crowd was the smallest for any of the 14 Wales-New Zealand matches at the Principality Stadium, reflecting how low expectations had fallen after years of struggle on and off the field. It was also a major step up from Wales’s unconvincing 28-21 win over Japan the previous weekend.

For New Zealand, the defeat stings, but it does little damage to their tournament position. After France beat South Africa on Friday, the All Blacks still move above the Springboks to the top of the Nations Championship’s southern section, with one weekend of regular matches left.

Sources: BBC Sport match report, Wales 35-28 New Zealand (November 14, 2026).

Heirs Challenge Sotheby’s $180m Van Gogh Sale Over Nazi-Era ‘Duress’ Claim

Days before it is due to become the most expensive Van Gogh ever sold at auction, Châtaigniers en fleurs has become the subject of a restitution dispute. Heirs of Samuel Fischer, the German-Jewish publisher whose family owned the painting for more than 25 years, say it may have changed hands under duress as the Nazis tightened their grip on Germany.

What the heirs are claiming

Representatives of the Fischer family have instructed Berlin lawyer Gunnar Schnabel, who has written to Sotheby’s, according to the New York Times. His argument is that the painting was sold in Amsterdam before World War Two because of the financial damage the family’s publishing house suffered under Nazi rule. A forced or distressed sale of that kind can give heirs a claim even when there was no outright confiscation.

Schnabel has said his clients are prepared to work towards “a fair and just solution in the spirit of the 1998 Washington Principles,” according to The Telegraph. Those international guidelines encourage museums, dealers and auction houses to reach fair settlements over art lost because of Nazi persecution.

Sotheby’s response

The auction house says it has already looked closely at the painting’s history. “While our research to date has not established that the painting was sold under duress, we recognize the importance of engaging thoughtfully and constructively with the family and are committed to working toward a mutually satisfactory resolution,” Sotheby’s told the BBC.

The sale is scheduled for Wednesday, November 18, in New York. Sotheby’s has not said whether the challenge will change those plans.

The painting’s journey from Auvers to auction

Van Gogh painted Châtaigniers en fleurs in Auvers-sur-Oise, outside Paris, on 24 May 1890, roughly two months before his death. After he died it passed to his brother Theo. Sotheby’s provenance shows it moving through dealers and collectors in Paris and Berlin before Samuel Fischer, founder of the S. Fischer Verlag publishing house, bought it in 1909.

Fischer died in 1934 and the painting stayed in the family. Sotheby’s says it was deposited with the Paul Cassirer firm in 1932 or 1933 and acquired by Henriette and Marcel Kapferer in Paris in 1936. Four further owners have held it since then, according to the BBC. The Guardian reports that its later owners included Hollywood producer and Capitol Records co-founder Buddy DeSylva.

Why the stakes are so high

The canvas is the centrepiece of the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection, a group of 12 Impressionist and modern works assembled from the 1960s by Argentine collectors Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier. The collection, which also includes works by Cézanne and Monet, had been out of public view for decades.

At $180m, Châtaigniers en fleurs reportedly carries the highest estimate of any lot in this autumn’s New York sales. It would comfortably beat the current auction record for Van Gogh, the $117.2m paid for Verger avec cyprès at Christie’s in 2022. That makes the outcome of the Fischer claim significant for the heirs, the sellers, Sotheby’s and the wider art market, which has faced growing pressure over the provenance of works that changed hands in the 1930s.

Sources: BBC News (November 14, 2026); The Telegraph (November 14, 2026); Sotheby’s lot catalogue for Châtaigniers en fleurs; The Guardian (September 30, 2026).

Copper Wire Upgrade Behind US Flight Shutdown, Duffy Says, as Contractor Faces Scrutiny

The nationwide shutdown that grounded every flight in the continental United States on Friday began with routine maintenance on decades-old wiring, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday. Work to swap copper lines for fibre went wrong, he said, and the government now wants to know whether the contractor or the equipment was at fault.

How a wiring job shut down US airspace

Speaking at a news conference, Duffy said the upgrade was being carried out by L3Harris, a technology contractor, as part of a move away from copper wire that he described as so old “it was being discontinued.” He called the network “an incredibly old telecommunications system.”

According to Duffy, a router that engineers were working on began flooding other air traffic control systems with traffic. That caused communication problems between controllers and aircraft, and the government decided to close the airspace for safety. The question investigators are now trying to answer, he said, is whether the failure came down to “incompetence” by the company doing the work or to faulty equipment.

Officials were keen to rule out a more sinister explanation. The government does not believe a cyber-attack was involved, Duffy said, though the investigation is not finished. Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford went further: “We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI related.”

The longest stoppage since 9/11

No flight was allowed to take off from the continental US for more than four hours after the ground stop began at 15:54 EST (19:54 GMT) on Friday. It was the longest suspension of its kind since all flights were grounded for several days after the 11 September 2001 attacks. SmartAI News covered the shutdown as it happened, from the FAA’s initial nationwide ground stop order to the moment the airspace reopened.

The aftershocks are still being felt. More than 3,500 US flights were cancelled and over 2,000 delayed on Saturday, according to tracking site FlightAware. Some passengers were left stuck on aircraft on the tarmac, unable either to depart or return to the gate, while some international departures were allowed to leave in an apparent effort to free up space at airports. The FAA administrator has said air travel should recover by the end of Sunday.

A warning to Congress

Duffy used the news conference to press lawmakers for money. Without upgrades to air traffic control infrastructure, he warned, a similar failure could happen again. President Donald Trump has asked Congress for $30.1bn for the work, and Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

Former Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole told the BBC that restarting the system within about four and a half hours showed “a resilience in the system,” but added: “what’s to say it’s not going to happen tomorrow?”

What happens next

The immediate focus is on clearing the backlog of stranded passengers and aircraft out of position. The bigger questions will take longer: what went wrong with the router during the upgrade, why a single piece of equipment could disrupt the wider network, and whether Congress will now move faster on the modernisation funding the administration says is needed to stop a repeat.

Sources: BBC News report on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s news conference (November 14, 2026); The Times of Israel liveblog (November 14, 2026).

Philippines Wins First Eurovision Asia as Carmelle Takes Crown With Sobra-Sobra

The first Eurovision Song Contest ever staged in Asia has a Filipino champion. Carmelle, a 19-year-old singer and the youngest performer in the field, won Saturday night’s grand final in Bangkok with Sobra-Sobra, an upbeat women’s empowerment anthem that blends pop with a rap section. She finished on 211 points, 41 clear of host nation Thailand.

A win with both the juries and the fans

Carmelle’s victory was decisive because it came from both halves of the vote. The national juries gave her 93 points, the most of any act, and viewers added 118, again the highest score. No other performer topped either table.

That matters because the two votes told different stories further down the scoreboard. Thailand’s duo MANG x DAOU, singing the romantic pop number Aroma, ranked only fourth with the juries on 62 points. The public lifted them to second overall: their 108 points from viewers were the second-best audience score of the night, giving a total of 170. Vietnam’s Tóc Tiên, who opened the show with Em Tiên, went the other way: the juries had her second on 83, and she finished third overall on 164.

Malaysia came fourth with 152 points, followed by Laos (139), Bhutan (126), South Korea (113), Mongolia (94), Nepal (69), Cambodia (61) and Bangladesh (35).

Tuk-tuks, beatboxers and a technical hitch

The show leaned into its host city. Each of the 11 acts arrived on stage aboard a tuk-tuk, waving their national flag as the crowd at the One Bangkok Forum cheered them in.

Some of the night’s most talked-about moments came from outside the top three. Bangladesh’s entry, the beatbox group Beatmosphere, performed without any backing track, building drums and bass entirely with their voices. Laos’s Thinla sang Bae dressed in a traditional Lao hilltribe outfit, and her song got an unplanned encore: an apparent technical problem meant her music video played during the broadcast, so it was the last song viewers heard before voting opened. She finished fifth.

Bulgaria’s Dara, who won the main Eurovision Song Contest earlier in 2026, performed her winning song Bangaranga and a new single, Bad Idea, before handing Carmelle the trophy. Thai star Jeff Satur also performed.

How the voting worked

The format closely follows the European original. Half of each country’s result came from a public vote and half from the 11 national juries, with additional points from a rest-of-the-world vote so fans outside the competing countries could take part.

Can Eurovision Asia last?

Organisers spent decades talking about an Asian edition of the contest, and several earlier attempts collapsed before they reached the stage. Getting to a first final is a milestone in itself.

Whether there will be a second one is less certain. The BBC’s correspondent in Bangkok reported that the arena was busy but not full and that the crowd thinned soon after the trophy was presented. Many people in the audience were existing Eurovision fans who had travelled from outside the region. It is also unclear how committed regional broadcasters are to keeping the contest going, or to expanding it beyond its first 11 countries.

For the Philippines, those questions can wait. A 19-year-old has put the country’s name first in the record book of a brand-new contest, beating the host nation in front of its home crowd.

Sources: BBC News report from Bangkok (November 14, 2026); Associated Press (November 14, 2026); ESCplus full jury and public results (November 14, 2026).

Three Arrested After Grenade Attack Kills Woman in Kafr Manda

Three suspects have been arrested in connection with a grenade attack that killed a woman and injured three others in the northern town of Kafr Manda, Israeli police said Saturday. The arrests came as police seized the vehicle believed to have been used in the attack and the country’s police chief arrived on the scene to oversee the investigation.

Arrests and seized vehicle

Police said the three suspects were arrested for being involved in the alleged throwing of a grenade that killed a woman and injured three others in Kafr Manda. Officers also seized the car from which they believe the grenade was thrown, in what appears to be a swift response to the attack.

Israel Police Commissioner Daniel Levy was on the scene in Kafr Manda to receive an assessment of the ongoing investigation. His presence underscored the seriousness with which police are treating the incident.

Investigation ongoing

The investigation into the grenade attack remains ongoing, with police working to establish the full circumstances of the incident and the roles of those arrested. Further details on the victims and the motive behind the attack have not yet been released.

Police have not said whether further arrests are expected. SmartAI Intel will update this story as more information is released.

Sources: The Times of Israel liveblog coverage (November 14, 2026).

Race to Dubai Showdown: What McIlroy Needs After Falling Four Behind Hatton

Rory McIlroy held the outright lead of the DP World Tour Championship for part of Saturday’s third round. Three bogeys in a row then changed the picture. He now goes into Sunday four shots behind Tyrrell Hatton, and his chance of an eighth Race to Dubai title has become a straight contest with one rival: Eugenio Chacarra, who is level with him on five under.

The three holes that changed Saturday

McIlroy’s round at the Earth Course turned in the space of a few holes. An eagle on the par-five seventh put him one clear of the field. He then dropped shots on the eighth, ninth and 10th, which took him from the outright lead to chasing the leaders.

He birdied the 14th but gave the shot back on the 15th. On the 18th he nearly holed a six-foot eagle putt and settled for a birdie and an even-par 72. That round was four shots worse than Hatton’s on the same day, and it is the difference between them going into Sunday.

Hatton’s 68 was hardly smooth. He found the water from the 18th tee, put his approach in a greenside bunker and still made par. He leads on nine under, one ahead of Victor Perez, with Mikael Lindberg third on six under. “There is a lot that can change,” Hatton said. “The course is playing difficult this week and there’s a lot of fantastic players just behind.”

Why the Race to Dubai is now a two-man contest

McIlroy arrived in Dubai more than 500 points behind Chacarra in the season-long standings. The winner of this event takes 2,000 points, so the tournament decides the title. McIlroy’s route is simple to state but hard to achieve: finish in the top four and finish ahead of Chacarra.

Right now he does neither on his own. He and Chacarra share fourth place on five under with Adam Scott and Francesco Laporta. That makes Sunday a contest between two players in different groups. McIlroy will play alongside Dan Bradbury, who shot a 66 on Saturday, while Chacarra plays elsewhere on the course. Each will be watching the leaderboard as much as his own card.

Chacarra’s Saturday shows how unpredictable he can be. His 68 included nine birdies, three bogeys and a double bogey. He started the day four shots behind and finished it level with the man chasing him for the title.

The other possible champions

Jon Rahm is still mathematically alive. A win on Sunday would give the Spaniard the Race to Dubai, but rounds of 71, 71 and 71 leave him on three under, six shots behind Hatton. He would need one of the best rounds of the week, and help from the players above him.

Hatton, meanwhile, is chasing his first DP World Tour Championship and goes out in the final group alongside Perez, who shot a 67. Lindberg and 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott, who also shot a 67, play in the group ahead of them.

What an eighth title would mean

A win for McIlroy on Sunday would give him his eighth Race to Dubai crown, which would equal Colin Montgomerie’s all-time record. Saturday’s back-to-back bogeys made that harder but not unrealistic: he is four shots back, with one round to play, on a course that Hatton himself says is playing difficult.

Sources: BBC Sport, DP World Tour Championship third-round report (November 14, 2026); Associated Press report from Dubai (November 14, 2026); Sky Sports golf coverage (November 14, 2026).

Le Tissier Stunner Helps Man Utd Beat Palace 2-0 in WSL

Manchester United captain Maya Le Tissier produced a moment of brilliance to mark her 150th appearance for the club, scoring a stunning strike from 25 yards as the Red Devils beat Crystal Palace 2-0 in the Women’s Super League on Saturday. Elisabeth Terland added a second goal in a dominant display at Leigh Sports Village that lifted United into fourth place in the table.

A captain’s strike to remember

Le Tissier was presented with a framed shirt bearing the number 150 before kick-off, and she marked the occasion spectacularly. After 18 minutes of United dominance, Jess Park found the 24-year-old captain 25 yards from goal. Le Tissier took a touch and whipped her effort low into the bottom corner, sending the home crowd into raptures and giving United the lead their play deserved.

Palace came out for the second half with more attacking intent and almost levelled when Bethany England’s effort rolled inches wide of the post. But the points were wrapped up for United when Park threaded a ball into the box for Elisabeth Terland to slot into the corner for her third WSL goal of the campaign, sealing a comfortable 2-0 victory.

United on the up

It has not always been pretty for United under manager Eva Olid, but the Red Devils are firmly on the up after a rocky start to the WSL season. Having been beaten in their opening two games of the campaign, United are now unbeaten in 12 in all competitions and have not tasted defeat since September 13. Olid’s side also became the first team to prevent champions Manchester City from winning this term.

From the first whistle at Leigh Sports Village, United were in control against Palace and it was more a question of how many the hosts would score. Concerns had been raised over the lack of depth in the squad, but Olid has the luxury of leaving Ella Toone on the bench as she selects her favoured starting line-up. Securing a place in the Champions League may be a very realistic target for United this season.

What the result means

The win takes United up to fourth in the WSL table, a point behind third-placed London City Lionesses, who take on Arsenal on Sunday. Palace remain 11th after a defeat in which they showed glimpses of attacking threat but were ultimately outclassed by a United side growing in confidence with every match.

For Le Tissier, the day belonged to her. A captain’s goal on her 150th appearance, in a win that keeps United’s momentum rolling, could hardly have been scripted better.

Sources: BBC Sport live coverage of Man Utd 2-0 Crystal Palace (November 14, 2026).

Japan Stuns Brazil 3-2 in Friendly as Ancelotti and Raphinha See Red

Japan produced one of the most memorable results in its football history on Saturday, beating five-time World Cup winners Brazil 3-2 in a dramatic international friendly played in Tokyo. Tatsuhiro Sakamoto’s stoppage-time winner at 90’+1 completed a remarkable comeback after Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti and forward Raphinha were both sent off in the chaotic closing stages.

A chaotic finale in Tokyo

The match swung wildly in the final minutes as tempers flared at the Tokyo stadium. Brazil, who had looked comfortable for much of the game, saw their discipline unravel just as Japan mounted a late surge. Carlo Ancelotti, the Brazilian national team coach, was sent to the stands by the referee in the dying minutes, while star forward Raphinha followed him with a straight red card. With Brazil reduced and rattled, Japan pressed home their advantage.

Tatsuhiro Sakamoto struck the decisive blow deep into stoppage time, finding the net at 90’+1 to seal a 3-2 victory that sent the home crowd into raptures. The goal capped a remarkable turnaround for Japan, who had trailed Brazil during the contest before fighting back to claim one of their most famous wins over a senior Brazil side.

Japan’s famous victory

For Japan, the win represents a landmark result in the November international window. Beating Brazil — a nation synonymous with football excellence and five World Cup triumphs — on their own soil in a friendly carried added significance. The Japanese side showed resilience and composure under pressure, particularly after going behind, and Sakamoto’s late winner will be remembered as one of the defining moments of Japanese football in 2026.

The result also served as a statement ahead of future international competitions, demonstrating that Japan can compete with and defeat the traditional powerhouses of the sport. Players and staff celebrated wildly at the final whistle, aware they had just produced a result that would reverberate far beyond a single friendly encounter.

Brazil’s night to forget

For Brazil and Carlo Ancelotti, the evening ended in frustration and disbelief. Taking his side to Japan for what was supposed to be a straightforward friendly, Ancelotti instead found himself ejected from the technical area as the match descended into chaos. Raphinha’s dismissal left Brazil a man down at the worst possible moment, just as Japan were pushing for a winner.

The red cards overshadowed what had been an entertaining contest up to that point. Brazil had entered the match as heavy favorites and dominated large periods, but the loss of composure in the final stages proved costly. Ancelotti will face questions about his team’s discipline, while the Brazilian Football Confederation may review the incidents that led to both dismissals.

The defeat leaves Brazil with work to do as they regroup after an international window that ended on a sour note in Tokyo. For Japan, meanwhile, the 3-2 victory stands as a night to savor — a famous win over one of the game’s greatest teams, sealed in the most dramatic fashion possible.

Sources: BBC Sport live coverage of Japan vs Brazil (November 14, 2026); ESPN international friendlies scoreboard (November 14, 2026).

The UK and France have renewed their bilateral agreement on English Channel migration management as crossing attempts and deaths reach record levels in 2026.

The renewed agreement

The agreement between the two governments coordinates efforts to manage migration across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. It includes joint patrols, intelligence sharing, and beach surveillance on the French side, where most departure attempts originate.

The renewal comes as 2026 becomes the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings. More than 60 people have died trying to reach England in overcrowded dinghies since January.

The human cost

In the latest week of data, ending 8 November, the UK government reported that 903 migrants arrived by small boat into the UK in 14 boats. Each crossing attempt carries significant risk. Dinghies designed for a few people often carry 30 to 50 migrants. Crossings happen at night in cold waters, often in poor weather. Even in summer, Channel water temperatures can cause hypothermia within minutes. Capsized vessels in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes pose a constant drowning risk.

On Saturday, November 14, a man in his 20s died attempting the crossing. His body was found on Sainte-Cecile beach near Le Touquet after French authorities stopped an overloaded dinghy from departing. Five other migrants were treated for hypothermia at the scene.

French enforcement efforts

The French coastguard’s Regional Operational Center for Surveillance (CROSS) deploys overnight teams to monitor migrant boarding attempts at northern French beaches. Local fire and rescue services conduct sweeps when overloaded vessels are detected.

However, the sheer volume of attempts has overwhelmed enforcement capabilities. Smugglers continue to organize departures, charging migrants thousands of euros per person for passage.

Political sensitivity

Channel migration has become one of the most politically sensitive issues in both the UK and France. UK governments have faced pressure from voters to “stop the boats” and reduce irregular migration. French authorities have resisted UK pressure to take unilateral action on French soil. Human rights organizations have criticized both countries for prioritizing enforcement over migrant safety.

Previous agreements between the two countries have failed to significantly reduce crossing numbers or deaths, and the renewed pact faces skepticism from critics on all sides.

What happens next

With winter approaching, sea conditions will become even more dangerous. Yet migration pressure shows no sign of decreasing. The renewed UK-France agreement will be tested in the coming months as both governments face increasing public pressure to reduce deaths and crossings.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the agreement is implemented and crossing data is released.

The Trump administration’s closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has devastated global health programs worldwide, disrupting HIV treatment, maternal health services, and famine relief across the developing world.

The closure and its scope

USAID was the primary US agency for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. For decades, it managed billions of dollars in health, education, and humanitarian programs across more than 100 countries.

The Trump administration closed the agency as part of a broader effort to reduce federal spending and assume more direct control over foreign assistance through the State Department. In the process, the administration redirected $1.35 billion in global health funding to cover the cost of closing the agency.

Programs disrupted worldwide

The closure has hit multiple sectors.

HIV treatment: In sub-Saharan Africa, USAID-funded programs provided antiretroviral treatment to millions of people living with HIV. South Africa, which operates the world’s largest HIV treatment program, has reported significant disruptions to drug supply chains.

Maternal health: In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, USAID-supported clinics provided prenatal care, skilled birth attendance, and postnatal care to millions of women. The closure has left many facilities without essential medicines and staff.

Famine relief: In the Horn of Africa, USAID-funded food assistance programs reached millions of people facing acute food insecurity. The closure has interrupted food distributions in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.

Countries most affected

The countries most heavily affected by the USAID closure include South Africa, where HIV treatment and maternal health programs face disruption; Nigeria, where malaria prevention and maternal health services are at risk; Ethiopia, which relies on famine relief and health system support; Bangladesh, where maternal and child health programs have been affected; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Ebola surveillance and health system strengthening programs are under pressure.

Legal and political fallout

The closure has drawn criticism from lawmakers and nonprofit organizations. Public Citizen has sued the State Department over the lack of transparency around bilateral global health agreements and the closure process. The lawsuit is ongoing in federal court.

The $1.35 billion redirected from global health programs exceeds the entire annual health budget of many affected countries, amplifying the impact of the closure.

What happens next

With USAID closed, the State Department now manages remaining foreign assistance through direct bilateral agreements. However, the lack of USAID’s technical expertise and country-level presence has created implementation challenges.

The closure represents one of the largest reductions in US foreign assistance in the post-World War II era, and its effects on global health will be felt for years to come.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Nearly $20 million in cash has been found hidden in farm buildings, safes, and buried in forests as part of an investigation into a former minister of Viktor Orbán, Hungarian authorities have said — marking the latest escalation in Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s sweeping anti-corruption drive.

The discovery: $20 million in cash

The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) said the cash — totaling 5,071,632,000 forints, €2,658,350, and $1,257,100 — was found in secluded locations across the country following a two-day search. The money has been deposited into the Hungarian State Treasury.

Investigators found wads of banknotes in safes, buried in woodlands, and hidden in agricultural and residential buildings and warehouses.

The discovery is part of an investigation into Miklós Seszták, who served as minister of national development for four of Orbán’s 16 years in power. Seszták is accused of accepting bribes as part of a scheme involving the state transport company. He has denied any wrongdoing.

“End of the mafia”

Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who unseated Orbán in a landslide election in April 2026 on a sweeping anti-corruption platform, described the discovery as the end of the “mafia.”

Magyar promised Hungarians “regime change” during the election and has set about undoing many Orbán-era policies since entering office. Allegations of corruption and cronyism have long dogged Orbán, who during his tenure turned Hungary into what the EU characterised as an “electoral autocracy.”

The NVVH has dubbed the investigation “Operation Purgatory,” established specifically to investigate allegations of corruption during Orbán’s rule.

Broader crackdown on Orbán-era figures

The Seszták investigation is part of a wider crackdown. Two of Orbán’s former ministers — including Seszták — and former central bank chief György Matolcsy have been under arrest since September over separate corruption accusations. All deny wrongdoing.

On Monday, Hungarian authorities also detained Orbán’s brother and three others as part of a people-smuggling case.

Orbán, who served as prime minister for 16 years before losing to Magyar in April, has strongly denied the corruption allegations. His government faced long-standing accusations of offering lucrative government projects to allies and eroding democratic institutions.

What happens next

The NVVH investigation continues, with more arrests possible as authorities trace the origins of the $20 million in cash. The money has been deposited into the Hungarian State Treasury while the investigation proceeds.

Magyar’s government has pledged to continue its anti-corruption drive, though critics say the pace of prosecutions and the targeting of former officials will be a key test of the new administration’s commitment to rule of law.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the investigation proceeds.

A man in his 20s has died following an attempted small boat crossing of the English Channel, the French coastguard has reported. His body was discovered on Sainte-Cecile beach, near the coastal town of Le Touquet in northern France, on Saturday morning — adding to a rising death toll among migrants attempting one of the world’s most dangerous migrant crossings.

The incident: What happened Saturday morning

French authorities said an overnight rescue team from the Regional Operational Center for Surveillance (CROSS) had been deployed to monitor migrants boarding a “makeshift vessel” at the beach. Authorities stopped an overloaded dinghy from departing.

A small craft, along with land-based units from the local fire and rescue service, conducted “a thorough sweep of the area but found no one in the water.”

Following the operation, at approximately 08:00 local time (09:00 GMT), the body of a man in his twenties was discovered on the beach.

Five men were attended to by firefighters at the scene for signs of hypothermia after the boarding attempt was foiled.

A rising death toll

The death adds to a mounting toll among migrants attempting the dangerous crossing between France and England.

In the latest week of data, ending 8 November, the UK government reported that 903 migrants arrived by small boat into the UK in 14 boats.

More than 60 people have died trying to cross the Channel to England in increasingly overcrowded dinghies since the start of 2026, making this year the deadliest since migrant crossings began in earnest.

The Channel crossing has become one of the most politically sensitive issues in both the UK and France. Small, overcrowded dinghies attempt the busy shipping lane in all weather conditions, often at night, with migrants paying smugglers for passage. The waters are cold even in summer, and hypothermia can set in quickly.

French response and investigation

The French coastguard has said an investigation will be opened to “determine the circumstances surrounding the incident.” CROSS teams continue to monitor northern French beaches overnight, and local fire and rescue services remain on standby to respond to overloaded or distressed vessels.

French authorities have faced increasing pressure to prevent departures, while UK authorities have pushed for stronger enforcement on the French side of the Channel. The two governments have negotiated multiple agreements over the years to reduce crossings, yet the number of attempts and deaths continues to rise.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the French coastguard investigation proceeds.

The Trump administration plans to redirect or withhold nearly all of the $605 million Congress allocated for international family planning aid this year, according to an internal US State Department budget report and a memo to lawmakers obtained by CNN. The move represents one of the most significant reductions in US global health spending in decades and marks a sharp break from decades of bipartisan support for international family planning programs.

The diversion: $605 million at stake

The preliminary Fiscal Year 2026 allocation report — called the Section 653(a) Allocation Report — reveals plans to redirect or repurpose almost all of the funding Congress had allocated to supply contraception and other reproductive health services to women overseas.

The budget plans also involve moving nearly a billion dollars into a global health innovation fund benefiting US corporations, while sharply cutting global health funding for low- and middle-income countries.

Tens of millions of the family planning funding are being diverted to support the “energy security needs” of US partners facing market disruptions amid the wars in Iran and Ukraine, according to a September memo signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The memo offered few additional details on how that money would be spent.

Countries hit hardest: Eight nations at zero funding

Eight countries have had their health funding cut to zero since 2024: Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Gambia, South Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Yemen. South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe each face more than $100 million in cuts to their health programs. These countries include some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. South Africa has the largest HIV treatment program globally. Yemen faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Sudan is in the midst of a devastating civil war. Somalia faces famine conditions.

Congressional backlash and legal challenge

The actions have drawn sharp criticism from nonprofit organizations and lawmakers who argue the administration is overstepping its authority. Under the US Constitution, Congress holds the power of the purse — the authority to decide how taxpayer money is spent.

Congresswoman Lois Frankel (D-FL), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, said:

“The Trump administration’s refusal to spend Congressionally-appropriated funds for international family planning, as required by law, is shameful and dangerous. These decisions have real, life-changing consequences for women’s health around the world.”

Vincent Lin, associate director of health policy and advocacy at Partners In Health, told CNN:

“To see dollars that have been fought for and written into the law by Congress moved away or siphoned away to energy security needs, or to US private companies with a profit margin, or out of really important public health programs … I think it is devastating to see that happen. This is the clearest situation of the executive branch ignoring and or violating Congressional will.”

Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, has sued the State Department in an effort to force the release of records surrounding bilateral global health agreements. The lawsuit — Public Citizen v. Department of State — is ongoing in federal court, though some documents have been released following Freedom of Information Act requests by watchdog groups.

Human impact: 34,000 maternal deaths prevented in 2024 alone

In fiscal year 2024 — before Trump came back to office — US investment in global family planning is estimated to have prevented 34,000 maternal deaths, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The funding also prevented millions of unintended pregnancies and improved babies’ health and family incomes across the developing world.

For decades, US family planning aid has provided millions of women overseas with modern contraceptives, giving them the ability to prevent or space out pregnancies. Research shows this improves maternal mortality rates, family incomes, and babies’ health.

Public Citizen’s analysis of the leaked budget document — conducted in conjunction with Partners In Health (PIH) and PAI, a reproductive rights advocacy organization — found steep reductions in US health assistance for most countries when compared to 2024 funding levels.

Broader context: A pattern of health funding cuts

The Trump administration’s diversion of family planning funds is part of a broader pattern. Since returning to office, the administration has made several efforts to assume more control over US global health funding and make spending reductions. The administration previously redirected $1.35 billion in global health funding to cover the cost of closing the US Agency for International Development (USAID). There have been multiple efforts to stop transferring certain funds to the Centers for Disease Control. Previous reporting has covered the redirection of global health programs to cover USAID closure costs. Many of those changes have lacked public announcements or transparency, according to CNN reporting.

What happens next

The State Department has defended the moves, with a spokesman telling CNN that “the administration is consistently evaluating the use of foreign assistance to ensure it is used to meet critical needs, including unanticipated contingencies such as the current global energy crisis, within the context of its annual appropriated budget and the authorities available to the president and the secretary.”

On family planning specifically, the spokesman said: “Our focus is on implementing life-saving care, including in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health, through new, landmark bilateral global health MOUs (memoranda of understanding).”

However, the administration’s refusal to spend Congressionally-appropriated funds sets up a potential constitutional confrontation between the executive and legislative branches. With Public Citizen’s lawsuit ongoing and congressional Democrats vowing to fight the cuts, the fate of the $605 million remains uncertain.

The countries affected — particularly South Africa, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen — face immediate gaps in maternal health, HIV treatment, and basic healthcare services as the funding cuts take effect.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the State Department, Congress, and the courts respond to the funding diversion.

The United States has officially lost its measles elimination status after 26 years, driven by surging outbreaks and declining vaccination rates.

Elimination status lost

An independent commission of experts reporting to the director of the Pan American Health Organization determined that the US no longer qualifies as having eliminated measles, according to a source close to the process who spoke to CNN.

The decision means measles is no longer considered eliminated as a continually transmitting illness in the United States — a status the country had held since 2000 thanks to widespread vaccination.

Record-breaking outbreaks

Case counts have broken records for two consecutive years. So far in 2026, the country has recorded more measles cases than in any other year since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago — making this the worst year since 1991.

• Pennsylvania: Seven measles-associated deaths reported in 2026, in the state’s largest outbreak in more than three decades
• Wisconsin: Two measles-associated deaths reported
• New York: One measles-associated death reported
• 2025: Three measles deaths — the first reported in the US since 2015

A large outbreak in West Texas accounted for at least a third of all national cases in 2025. While state officials declared that outbreak over, other outbreaks continue to grow.

Vaccination gaps

Nearly all measles cases have been in people who had not received the highly effective measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine or whose vaccination status is unknown.

The United States has set a target vaccination rate of 95%, but coverage among kindergarteners has dipped below that in recent years — leaving communities vulnerable to outbreaks.

What happens next

Because measles is so contagious, high vaccination coverage is key to minimizing spread. The US is now on a path to regain its elimination status, but experts warn that sustained outbreaks could make that harder.

Mexico, which has had several large measles outbreaks of its own, is also in danger of losing its elimination status.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the CDC releases further national data.

President Donald Trump will hold the first-ever trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in Shenzhen, China, the White House announced Saturday.

Historic three-way meeting

The unprecedented talks will take place on the sidelines of the APEC summit, with Trump traveling to Shenzhen on Wednesday after stops in Manila for a Quad leaders’ meeting and the US-ASEAN Special Summit.

Trump will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons during the talks, a White House spokeswoman said. The meeting comes as Trump told advisers in recent days that he may hold off on attacking Iran if the US faces no new provocations from Tehran or Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

What to expect

Senior US officials said Washington does not expect an agreement from the three-way meeting, calling it “the entry point, the first conversation” at the leader level. The officials said Trump plans to raise Iran but not Ukraine, because China is not part of the separate US-Russia track.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will join Trump for parts of the China visit but will not participate in official meetings, according to US officials.

Context: A week of crisis and diplomacy

The summit announcement comes on the heels of a turbulent week for the Trump administration:

• Friday’s FAA nationwide ground stop — all departing US flights were halted for nearly four hours after a communications outage struck Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed overloaded legacy radar and telecommunications equipment; Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a cyberattack but did not rule one out. Airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET, though thousands of flights remained canceled or delayed into Saturday.

• New Orleans tanker collision — an asphalt tanker struck the American Heritage riverboat on the Mississippi River around 12:30 p.m. Friday, capsizing the vessel. Nearly 200 people were aboard; all were rescued with no fatalities, though 30+ were injured.

• US floated NATO membership for Ukraine Donbas withdrawal — President Zelenskyy said US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff asked whether Kyiv would concede part of the Donbas still under its control in exchange for NATO membership — the first time Washington raised such a proposal.

Senior US officials described the Shenzhen meeting as exploratory, with no breakthrough expected. The talks mark the first trilateral engagement between Washington, Moscow and Beijing since discussions paused in February after the war with Iran erupted.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the White House releases further details.

The United States has floated offering Ukraine NATO membership in exchange for withdrawing from the part of the Donbas region still under its control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday, as Washington explores terms for ending Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The proposal

US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff asked Ukraine whether Kyiv would concede the part of Donbas still under its control to Moscow in exchange for NATO membership, Zelenskyy told reporters. It is the first time Washington has raised such a proposal, the Financial Times reported.

“If the American side confirms precisely this to us, together with other NATO partners, then I will ask our Ukrainian society what it thinks: do we accept it or not?” Zelenskyy said. He added that he had no right to make such a decision unilaterally and that Kyiv would not recognise the occupied territories within Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders, including the Donbas, as Russian.

Washington plays down the idea

The United States has not confirmed Zelenskyy’s account. Asked about it, a US official told the BBC that “many ideas continue to be discussed but any final deal will have to be agreed to by both parties” — stopping well short of endorsing a NATO-for-Donbas swap.

Hours after Zelenskyy went public, Jared Kushner moved to cool the speculation. The envoy appealed for “confidentiality” in what he described as a sensitive process, complained that “maximalist” proposals and “strong political rhetoric” had leaked from the talks, and said the aim of “private discussions” was to test new ideas that might lead to a breakthrough in what he called a “horrible war.”

His remarks were widely read as a rebuke to Kyiv for making the idea public. The BBC’s Kyiv correspondent suggested Zelenskyy may have done so deliberately: Ukraine sees NATO as its only reliable protection, and airing the question puts back on the table an option many considered closed. Zelenskyy himself said the issue was now “back on the agenda” in an “extremely difficult conversation” about European security.

Several NATO members besides the US remain wary of Ukrainian membership, and Russia has repeatedly said it will not accept another alliance member on its border. Moscow insists any ceasefire must follow a final settlement under which Ukraine hands over the parts of the Donbas Russian troops have not captured.

What is at stake

Ukraine still controls about 20% of the Donbas region. Russian forces have sustained tens of thousands of casualties this year in their attempts to seize the “fortress belt” of cities remaining under Kyiv’s control.

The proposal emerged during the first trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US since discussions paused in February after the war with Iran erupted. European officials joined discussions only with the Americans and Ukrainians; Russia has refused to accept them at the negotiating table.

EU leaders agreed on Friday that a coalition of officials from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK—plus the EU and NATO—would represent Europe at technical-level talks.

Broader security package

Zelenskyy said Kyiv was discussing a broader security package with its partners, including:

• Guarantees from NATO and the EU
• Long-term military support for a strong Ukrainian army
• An internationally backed reconstruction plan

Western countries have also discussed an arrangement short of full NATO membership but with multilateral agreements mimicking the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause.

Denmark has pledged a €645mn support package that includes 20mm ammunition for F-16s—needed to shoot down jet-powered drones—as well as €200mn for drone production.

Starshield satellite dispute

Zelenskyy also criticised speed limits imposed on Starshield satellite systems used by the Ukrainian military for middle-range strikes against Russian targets in occupied territory. He said the restrictions, in place for several days, have limited speeds to 161kph (100mph) and were hampering efforts to intercept Russian jet-powered drones.

Kyiv believes the restrictions were imposed to put pressure on Kyiv during the latest peace talks with Russia and strengthen Moscow’s position. SpaceX denied the claim in an email, calling it “false. There has been no change.”

Updated November 15, 2026: adds the US official’s response and Jared Kushner’s call for confidentiality. This is a developing story.

An asphalt tanker collided with a river passenger boat on the Mississippi River near downtown New Orleans on Friday, capsizing the vessel and triggering a large-scale rescue operation.

What happened

The Atlantic Asphalt tanker struck the American Heritage riverboat — owned by American Cruise Lines — around 12:30 p.m. local time Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, near the Port of New Orleans administration building. The passenger vessel had been docked for about two hours as the crew prepared for disembarkation when the collision occurred.

“The tanker lost control and collided into the cruise ship,” New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “The passengers began disembarking from the ship after that collision. But while that was happening, the cruise ship began to sink, and then eventually, the cruise ship toppled over and flipped.”

Rescue operation

Nearly 200 people were aboard the American Heritage at the time of impact. All were accounted for and rescued — what Mayor Moreno called a “miracle on the Mississippi.”

• 30+ people injured, including 30 passengers and two tanker officers
• All injured were hospitalized with non-critical injuries
• No fatalities and no children involved, according to authorities
• A three-alarm response dispatched 23 units and 57 personnel
• Some passengers were pulled from the water; others were transferred to rescue boats

Investigation

The National Transportation Safety Board is launching an investigation team expected to arrive Saturday morning. The U.S. Coast Guard said the tanker appears to have suffered “some type of a loss of steering” before the collision, though the exact cause remains under investigation.

The Mississippi River remains closed between mile markers 93 and 96 while responders assess the situation. The riverboat is “significantly damaged,” with only a small portion remaining above the water line, according to U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham.

Port of New Orleans sues tanker owners

The Port of New Orleans has filed a federal lawsuit blaming the tanker for the crash. The suit, filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, names the M/V Atlantic Asphalt, its owner Nave Shipping SA and its manager Thome Ship Management Pte Ltd.

According to court documents, the port is claiming more than $1 million in damage and says its terminal was “significantly damaged.” It wants compensation for cleanup, inspections, repairs and other costs, and has asked the court to have the tanker seized and sold to cover the bill.

The filing accuses the ship and its operators of “negligence, gross negligence, fault or carelessness,” and says they failed “to use all available means to avoid the risk” of hitting the moored riverboat.

Nave Shipping is a subsidiary of state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation. Thome said on Saturday that the tanker’s crew were safe and accounted for, and that it was “fully complying” with local authorities’ investigations. The port authority put the number of passengers aboard the American Heritage at about 129, plus crew; the riverboat was finishing an eight-day cruise through Louisiana and Mississippi.

Context

The collision comes on the same day as the FAA’s nationwide ground stop, which was lifted Friday night after nearly five hours of halted departures. Both incidents involved transportation infrastructure failures, though officials said there is no indication the two events are related.

Updated November 15, 2026: adds the Port of New Orleans lawsuit. This is a developing story and will be updated as the NTSB and Coast Guard release further findings.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, reopening U.S. airspace after nearly five hours of halted departures that stranded thousands of passengers across the country.

What happened

The emergency order, issued around 4:00 p.m. ET, grounded all departing flights at every U.S. airport after a telecommunications outage struck the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers — the regional facilities that guide high-altitude aircraft between airport terminal zones.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the trouble began at 3:36 p.m. ET, when aging radar and telecommunications systems began faltering. “Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data,” Duffy said at a White House briefing Friday night. “Because of that we shut the system down.”

Airborne domestic flights were allowed to continue to their destinations and land normally. Inbound international flights were managed on a case-by-case basis.

The scale of the disruption

The nearly five-hour ground stop — the longest nationwide aviation shutdown since the September 11, 2001 attacks — caused severe disruption across the U.S. air travel system:

• More than 6,600 flights cancelled
• 8,600 flights delayed
• At least 827 flights diverted to airports including Washington Dulles, Los Angeles International, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, and Nashville
• JetBlue cancelled all flights except Europe-bound departures from JFK and Boston; the airline said it plans to resume Saturday morning

Aviation analysts warned the grounding could disrupt airline schedules for days, with crews and aircraft out of position across the network.

Cause and response

Officials attributed the outage to overloaded legacy hardware, not a cyberattack. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “zero evidence” of a cyber security attack or rogue artificial intelligence, though he did not rule anything out completely.

Duffy pointed to the FAA’s aging infrastructure — switches and routers carrying critical air traffic data — and called for congressional funding. “It’s going to continue to fail,” Duffy told reporters. “How many times does this have to happen for Congress to give the money to fix it?” The FAA’s broader air traffic control overhaul is estimated to need another $30 billion to complete.

What happens now

Airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET, but Duffy warned that departures would resume gradually and it would take time for airlines to restore normal operations. “It’s going to be slow,” he said. “Hopefully tomorrow, we are going to start to see far better movement.”

Travelers were urged to check with their airlines for the latest flight status, as cancellations and delays were expected to continue into Saturday.

This is a developing story and will be updated as the FAA and airlines release further operational advisories.

Commercial air travel across the United States ground to a sudden halt during the peak Friday evening rush after federal aviation regulators ordered every departing plane in the country to stay on the tarmac.

Around 4:00 p.m. EST on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency advisory halting takeoffs at all U.S. airports, citing safety concerns after a sweeping communications breakdown struck the nation’s high-altitude air traffic network. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed minutes later that the order stemmed from an equipment failure affecting every high-altitude control hub in the National Airspace System.

“The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” Duffy said in a statement posted on X around 4:20 p.m. EST. “FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”

What the emergency FAA Command Center order says

In an urgent bulletin transmitted directly to commercial airlines, cargo carriers, and regional control towers, the Federal Aviation Command Center invoked rare emergency authority to freeze departures coast to coast.

“Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. Attention all aircraft operators, by order of the Federal Aviation Command Center all airports are ground stopped,” the federal advisory stated. “All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis.”

Federal officials and airport authorities emphasized three immediate operational rules for travelers caught in the Friday afternoon freeze:

• Aircraft already airborne on domestic routes are continuing safely to their scheduled destinations and are cleared to land normally.
• Every flight still parked at a gate or waiting on a taxiway at U.S. airports—from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare, and Dallas Fort Worth to New York’s JFK, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles—is barred from taking off until the order is lifted.
• Long-haul international flights already approaching U.S. airspace are being sequenced individually by controllers on a case-by-case basis.

How the communications failure spread across U.S. airspace

Early signs of trouble surfaced roughly 30 minutes before the nationwide halt. Aviation dispatch monitors first flagged intermittent radio frequency and equipment outages around 3:30 p.m. EST inside the Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center, followed shortly afterward by an equipment-outage advisory affecting departures routed out of Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Augusta Regional Airport towers around 3:50 p.m. EST.

Within minutes, the communications issue cascaded across the FAA’s network of 21 continental Air Route Traffic Control Centers—the regional facilities responsible for guiding high-altitude aircraft between airport terminal zones across thousands of miles of U.S. airspace. Neither the FAA nor the Department of Transportation immediately disclosed what triggered the simultaneous communications failure across those centers.

Only the second nationwide U.S. ground stop since 9/11

Full nationwide ground stops halting departures across every single U.S. airport are extraordinarily rare in modern aviation history. Outside of the multi-day closure of American airspace on September 11, 2001, the only comparable nationwide freeze occurred on January 11, 2023, when a corrupted database file crashed the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions pilot-alerting system for roughly 90 minutes and delayed or canceled more than 11,000 flights.

Air traffic control unions and congressional oversight panels have repeatedly warned Washington over the past two years that the FAA’s aging telecommunications backbone—much of which still relies on legacy copper lines transitioning to fiber-optic networks across more than 4,600 federal sites—remains vulnerable to cascading outages. Last year, telecom line failures sparked repeated regional ground stops serving Newark Liberty and Philadelphia International Airport.

Even if FAA engineers restore full communications between control centers later Friday evening, airline dispatchers warn that freezing peak Friday afternoon departures across every major hub simultaneously will trigger rolling crew timeouts, displaced aircraft, and schedule delays stretching into Saturday. Friday’s aviation emergency also caps a turbulent 24 hours for critical American digital and communications infrastructure, following major disruptions across Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online, Cloudflare’s developer network, and Anthropic’s Claude platform.

This is a developing breaking news story and will be updated as the FAA releases further operational advisories.

Artificial intelligence assistants have spent the past two years recommending laptops, flights, and household gear—only to hand shoppers a web link and force them to type in a 16-digit credit card number themselves. On Friday, OpenAI moved to close that final mile of e-commerce.

OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT Wallet on Friday, a built-in payment system created in partnership with American Express, Mastercard, and Visa that enables its personal AI agents—known as “dots”—to fill carts and complete online checkouts directly on a user’s behalf. First introduced at OpenAI’s developer conference in late September, dots operate as persistent, always-on personal agents inside ChatGPT.

The feature marks OpenAI’s most aggressive push yet into what Silicon Valley and Wall Street call “agentic commerce,” arriving during a fierce week of AI platform competition alongside Google’s launch of Gemini 4 Hydrogen for autonomous workflows and Anthropic’s six-times-oversubscribed $90.4 billion Nasdaq IPO.

How tokenized checkout works without exposing card numbers

Consumer reluctance to hand live credit card credentials to an autonomous software bot has been one of the biggest barriers to AI shopping. OpenAI engineered ChatGPT Wallet around card-network tokenization so that neither the AI dot nor the online retailer ever sees the numbers printed on a user’s physical card.

Once an eligible subscriber saves a card inside ChatGPT Wallet, each shopping request follows a strict multi-step guardrail:

• When a user instructs their dot to purchase an item, the agent assembles the order and presents a confirmation screen displaying the exact merchandise, total price, shipping details, and selected card.
• The shopper must explicitly approve every single transaction using device-level biometric security—such as Apple Face ID, Touch ID, or an Android fingerprint scan—which generates a verifiable authorization record.
• Upon biometric approval, Visa, Mastercard, or American Express issues a one-time payment token containing a transaction-specific card number, expiration date, and security code scoped solely to that purchase.
• Because the payment routes over standard card-network rails, shoppers keep all of their existing credit card points, cash-back rewards, and issuer chargeback protections if an item arrives damaged or fails to ship.

To prevent automated retail anti-bot filters from mistaking a dot for a scalper script or fraudulent checkout bot, OpenAI simultaneously published technical guidance for online merchants and partnered with payment processors Stripe and Adyen alongside fraud-detection specialists Forter and Signifyd.

Who gets access first—and why OpenAI is charging zero fees

Rather than opening AI checkouts to hundreds of millions of free accounts overnight, OpenAI is starting inside a tightly controlled sandbox. At launch on Friday, ChatGPT Wallet is available exclusively to a limited cohort of U.S. subscribers on OpenAI’s top-tier ChatGPT Pro plan who are at least 18 years old and hold an eligible U.S.-issued Visa, Mastercard, or American Express card, including supported Chase primary cards. Virtual cards, regular non-dot chats, Plus and Free tiers, and international markets are not yet supported.

“It just makes sense to watch it, start it in a contained environment, and then keep rolling from there,” American Express executive Luke Gebb told CNBC on Friday, noting that OpenAI’s earlier “Instant Checkout” experiment last autumn struggled to gain broad merchant traction before the company rebuilt its shopping architecture around standard merchant checkouts.

Notably, OpenAI confirmed it is taking zero cut of transactions processed through ChatGPT Wallet at launch. By waiving referral or payment fees initially, OpenAI aims to win over major retail brands ahead of the holiday shopping surge before eventually monetizing agent-driven commerce or expanding into pre-approved autonomous rules—where users will be able to set dollar caps, merchant categories, and time windows for their dots to handle routine reorders automatically.

Less than 24 hours after co-founder Jensen Huang resigned from the chipmaker he built over 33 years, Nvidia’s board of directors has made its first high-profile external move to fill the most powerful executive seat in the global artificial intelligence industry.

Nvidia’s board has approached Arm Holdings chief executive Rene Haas as a potential candidate to become the company’s next permanent CEO, the Financial Times reported Friday afternoon, citing people familiar with the succession process. Reuters noted that Haas is one of several contenders under early review and that there is no guarantee Nvidia will extend a formal offer or that Haas would agree to depart the British semiconductor architecture firm.

Both Arm Holdings and Nvidia declined to comment publicly on the outreach Friday as interim chief executive Colette Kress and newly named board chair Harvey C. Jones convened Nvidia’s senior leadership team at its Santa Clara headquarters ahead of Tuesday’s fiscal third-quarter earnings report. U.S.-listed shares of Arm pared deeper morning declines following the report to trade down roughly 5.5%, while Nvidia shares traded down between 3% and 4% amid a broader Friday semiconductor selloff.

Why Rene Haas stands out on Nvidia’s succession radar

Among external semiconductor chiefs, few executives know Nvidia’s internal engineering culture, data-center architecture, and customer ecosystem as intimately as Haas. Before joining Cambridge-based Arm in 2013, the American-born executive spent seven formative years at Nvidia between 2006 and 2013, rising to vice president and general manager of its computing products business.

After moving to Arm to lead its intellectual property licensing groups, Haas was elevated to chief executive officer in February 2022—the exact day Nvidia and Arm parent SoftBank Group abandoned Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion acquisition of Arm following fierce antitrust resistance from regulators in Washington, London, and Brussels.

Since taking the helm at Arm, Haas has executed one of the semiconductor sector’s sharpest strategic pivots:

• In September 2023, Haas steered Arm back onto the Nasdaq in a blockbuster $54.5 billion initial public offering—the largest tech listing of that year—before driving its market value past $130 billion on surging AI data-center demand.
• He overhauled Arm’s decades-old smartphone royalty model around its higher-margin Armv9 architecture and expanded compute subsystems directly into cloud servers, automotive chips, and AI PCs.
• Crucially for Nvidia customers, Haas maintained a deep technical partnership with Santa Clara: Nvidia’s flagship Grace Blackwell GB200 and upcoming Vera Rubin AI superchips pair Nvidia GPUs directly with custom Arm-based central processing units.

Obstacles to poaching Arm’s chief executive

Recruiting Haas away from Cambridge and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son would require navigating complex corporate and financial hurdles. Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank still controls roughly 88% to 90% of Arm Holdings and has placed Haas at the center of Son’s multi-hundred-billion-dollar AI infrastructure ambitions, holding a seat on SoftBank’s board of directors as well.

Analysts also note that Nvidia’s board—led for the first time by 1993 founding-era director Harvey C. Jones—explicitly committed Thursday to evaluating both internal and external candidates. Inside Nvidia, veteran lieutenants including executive vice president of worldwide field operations Jay Puri, accelerated computing chief Ian Buck, operations chief Debora Shoquist, and interim CEO Colette Kress hold decades of institutional continuity across Nvidia’s TSMC foundry allocations and hyperscaler contracts.

External speculation earlier this week also floated AMD chief executive Lisa Su, though semiconductor analysts widely view poaching Nvidia’s closest direct GPU rival as far more fraught with non-compete and antitrust friction than approaching a former Nvidia vice president whose company licenses complementary CPU designs.

What Wall Street is watching before Tuesday’s earnings call

For institutional investors rattled by Nvidia’s 14% stock slide over the past five trading sessions, Friday’s revelation signals that Jones and Nvidia’s board are moving rapidly rather than allowing a prolonged leadership vacuum to overhang the company’s 2027 Rubin chip transition.

Kress is scheduled to lead Nvidia’s fiscal third-quarter 2027 earnings call after the closing bell on Tuesday, November 17, where analysts are certain to press management on the timeline and criteria for the permanent CEO search—even as Huang prepares to testify under oath before Congress ahead of Thanksgiving over the national security questions surrounding his departure.