Global Express | November 14, 2026 - Russian Drone Hits Kyiv Hospital as Zelensky Flags New Starshield Disruptions

1. Russian drone hits Kyiv hospital as Zelensky flags Starshield disruption

At about 3am on November 13, a Russian drone smashed into the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics in central Kyiv, striking the hospital's second floor and an adjoining 19th-century building and injuring three people. The blast blew out windows in nearby buildings, including the National Academy of Arts across the road, as firefighters led dazed patients to safety through billowing smoke.

The six-storey hospital sits in the Shevchenkivskyi district, not far from the Danish and Romanian embassies. Witness Oleksandr said the attack narrowly missed patients and that it would have been far worse had the drone landed slightly further left. "Targeting the wounded - that's really low," he said. Ukraine says Russia has recently stepped up strikes on power plants, passenger trains and two bridges across the Dnipro, part of what Kyiv calls a campaign of terror aimed at making a weary population capitulate.

Speaking the day before the strike, Zelensky said SpaceX's Starshield system, which is overseen by the Pentagon, was again suffering significant disruptions, and that speed restrictions made it harder for Ukrainian interceptors to knock out enemy drones. The White House has yet to explain why the service has been throttled. Russia said it shot down nearly 1,200 Ukrainian drones overnight, one of the largest swarms sent by Kyiv, and reported at least four people killed in the Volgograd region.

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2. Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills at least six

An Israeli strike hit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis shortly after midnight, tearing through the complex's surgery unit and scattering charred debris across the destroyed ward, according to a Gaza Civil Defense spokesman. At least six people were killed, including 52-year-old Dr. Rizk Abu Shaira and a 13-year-old boy who was supposed to have surgery, while 40 people were injured, two of them doctors in critical condition.

Footage from inside the hospital showed two bombs, one of which failed to explode. A label on the unexploded bomb identified it as a US-manufactured GBU-39/B, a 250-pound munition supplied to Israel. "Gaza does not ask the world to count its dead ... It demands protection for those still alive," Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director-general of Gaza's Health Ministry, wrote on Facebook.

The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted the commander of Hamas's Khan Younis Brigade, Muhammad Abu Ismail, along with "additional terrorists who were hiding inside the Nasser Hospital." Despite a nominal US-brokered ceasefire agreed more than a year ago, Israel has carried out near-daily strikes in Gaza. According to the United Nations, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza since the ceasefire, and there is no fully functioning hospital left in the enclave.

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3. Two men convicted of spying for Iran in UK

Two Iranian men were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court on November 12 of spying for an Iranian intelligence service by carrying out surveillance on journalists and a lawyer in the UK. Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, and Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, were found guilty of "assisting a foreign intelligence service"; Sepahvand intended to carry out a "violent attack" against at least one target, while Manesh helped with planning. A third man, Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, was cleared of the same charge.

Police seized 534GB of data showing the pair were given documents that included pictures of targets, their work addresses, the make and colour of their cars and the names of pets, and they then used ChatGPT to carry out further research. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for Counter-Terrorism Policing, said it was the first time ChatGPT search history had been presented in a state threat case.

The court heard Sepahvand asked for 150,000 pounds in exchange for "finishing off" a target. Those under surveillance included journalists Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini, who worked for the London-based Persian broadcaster Iran International, Jonathan Turner, a founding member of UK Lawyers for Israel, and a media production professional. Both defendants are asylum seekers granted temporary leave to remain; Sepahvand arrived in the UK in a lorry in 2016 and Manesh via small boat in 2019.

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4. Turkiye and Qatar sign mutual defence agreement

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Istanbul on November 13, after which the two countries signed a mutual defence agreement. The Turkish presidency said Erdogan would keep working to prevent the resurgence of war in the Gulf and to establish a basis for dialogue and peace, while Sheikh Tamim praised the deal as a "strategic partnership." The governments also signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in peace, reconciliation and conflict resolution.

Security analyst Yusuf Alabarda told Al Jazeera that since the start of the Iran war, countries in the region "are feeling the effects of the war and no one is feeling secure." Gulf states, especially Qatar, have concluded that their security guarantees from the United States are "not working properly," he said, adding that Turkish weapons and air defences might be deployed to Qatar in the near term.

In August, Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a regional defence pact under which the three countries would come to each other's aid if one of them was attacked; the Turkish parliament ratified it last week. In October, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkiye signed a multilateral defence cooperation memorandum in Doha known as "Badr."

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5. Canada threatens to sue Stellantis over Brampton plant

Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly said on November 12 that the government had served auto giant Stellantis with a formal notice of default, giving the company 30 days to address its concerns or face legal action. The dispute centres on the planned sale of an idled assembly plant in Brampton, Ontario, which Stellantis announced earlier in the week it would sell to armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel.

Joly said the move violated Stellantis's contractual commitments to the Canadian government and to workers at Brampton, leaving the company "on the hook" for hundreds of millions of dollars. Prime Minister Mark Carney has called the situation at the plant "unacceptable" and a "betrayal" of its workers. Stellantis had scrapped plans to build its Jeep Compass at Brampton and shifted future production to a factory in Illinois.

Stellantis Canada CEO Trevor Longley said the company would return 24 million Canadian dollars it received in government support for the plant's original retooling plan, an amount that falls far short of Ottawa's own estimate of what is owed. He said selling the site to a Canadian manufacturer provides a path to return the facility to productive industrial use. Stellantis shares listed in Milan are down more than 60% so far in 2026.

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6. US existing home sales fall to lowest in 16 years

Existing home sales fell to 3.75 million in October, an 8.8% decline from a year earlier and the lowest level since 2010, according to the National Association of Realtors. "It was a punch in the gut," said Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com. "We expected to see a soft month but not the softest month since 2010." The market had been stuck in a stagnant holding pattern for more than four years.

The drop is mainly due to high mortgage rates. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage reached as high as 7.40% in October, the highest since 2023, and rates remain well above where they were a year ago. Higher inflation and bond yields have pushed up borrowing costs, and some of the slowdown was by design: the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate in September to make borrowing, including mortgages, more expensive.

Fed policymakers have signalled another rate hike could come in December, which could slow the housing market further. Berner acknowledged it might seem like "kicking the housing market while it's down," but said getting inflation under control is the long-run goal.

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7. Building collapse near Nairobi kills six

An unfinished eight-storey building collapsed in Syokimau on the outskirts of Nairobi on the morning of November 13, killing six people, according to Nairobi City County's emergency team. A preliminary report said the building's uppermost concrete slab gave way, bringing down part of the structure while construction workers were at the site; it did not establish why the slab failed.

The Kenya Red Cross initially reported that three people had been rescued and one person was missing, while TV reports later said five people had been pulled alive from the rubble and taken to hospital. The emergency report said the number of workers present when the building fell had not been confirmed, leaving open the possibility that others were trapped. Patrick Makau, the member of parliament for Mavoko, urged rescue agencies to act quickly: "Every second counts."

The accident came three weeks after a similar collapse in the capital on October 23 that killed eight people, reviving calls for stronger safety oversight on construction sites. The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis has identified poor workmanship, inadequate supervision, substandard materials and faulty designs as wider causes of building collapses in the country.

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8. Baghdad's first Jewish museum draws crowds

In a historic school building on Al-Rashid Street, Iraq's Jewish community opened Baghdad's first Jewish museum last month. Dozens of Iraqis visit each day to view faded school certificates, handwritten documents and family photographs that offer a glimpse into a community that was once integral to Iraqi life and has all but disappeared.

The museum occupies the Shamash Jewish School, founded in 1928 by the philanthropist Yacoub Shlomo Shamash. Display cases hold students' identity cards, graduation certificates and records, while framed black-and-white portraits line the walls, among them Sassoon Heskel, a Baghdad-born Jew who served as Iraq's first finance minister after the modern state was founded in 1920. The museum also pays tribute to the singer Salima Murad, one of Iraq's most acclaimed vocalists in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ammar al-Tamimi, legal representative of the Jewish community in Iraq, said no Jewish visitors have come yet, but Iraqis have arrived in significant numbers. Nabil Abdul Hameed, a 71-year-old Baghdad resident, has visited twice, the second time with his daughter and her children. "I saw people's interest in this subject, and I hope it is a seed of goodness that grows in the future, because the Jews were among the founders of this country," he said.

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9. AI unlocks hundreds of unknown theorems in Godel's notebooks

The Austrian logician Kurt Godel transformed mathematics with the two incompleteness theorems he published in 1931, paving the way for the digital age. He published only a few papers afterwards, but his unpublished work runs to tens of thousands of pages. Since 2017, the Finnish logician Jan von Plato has led a project at Helsinki University to understand 16 notebooks Godel wrote in the early 1940s - 1,009 pages of densely written maths and logic, much of it in the Gabelsberger shorthand that was obsolete even when Godel used it.

Progress had been painfully slow, about a page a week, until September, when von Plato enlisted the AI model Claude. Within a couple of days, Claude produced a comprehensive digest of the entire material, revealing that Godel had proved hundreds of theorems no one knew about, along with 14 themes in logic that have not been pursued. "I was flabbergasted," von Plato said. "Godel was far ahead of his time."

Godel fled Austria under the Nazis in 1940 and settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where he became a close friend of Albert Einstein. Increasingly paranoid in his later years, he refused to eat food that was not cooked by his wife.

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10. US-Israel split on Iran widens as 'no war, no peace' wears thin

US President Donald Trump said on November 12 that Washington does not need a deal with Iran and told Vice President JD Vance, who handles the Iran talks, to focus entirely on domestic anti-corruption and crime issues. Reports said Trump had earlier had a "hellish, heated argument" with Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Iran. An analysis published by Beijing Daily's news site on November 14 said the policy mismatch has widened after the US midterms reshuffled Congress and as Israel works through post-election coalition bargaining.

According to the report, Netanyahu has been calling Trump "every day" to press for a resumption of military action, while Trump favours continued diplomacy. Washington's focus is reopening the Strait of Hormuz and forcing Iranian concessions through economic blockade and limited strikes, whereas Netanyahu has not abandoned the goal of toppling the Iranian government. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a G7 foreign ministers' meeting that sanctions and the naval blockade have been "very significant," making a large-scale operation unnecessary.

Israel's security cabinet is due to meet on November 15 for the first time in about a month and to instruct the military to prepare for further strikes on Iran. IDF Chief of Staff Zamir has said the timing for military action is "not right." Qatar's foreign ministry warned that the "no war, no peace" state must not become normalised, and a UAE presidential diplomatic adviser said it cannot be a long-term solution. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the supreme leader has ordered an end to the current "no war, no peace" situation, and that Iran will talk while preserving its dignity.

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