UK - For the second time in as many months, the United States has removed its planes from an RAF base in Britain because of an alleged threat from Iran. Alarm bells should be ringing in Downing Street. On Monday, the US military evacuated at least a dozen aircraft, including nine air refuelling tankers, from RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk. The majority of the planes are thought to have been sent abroad. The move was reportedly prompted by a new threat from Iran. The Pentagon has raised the security level at the base and at nearby RAF Lakenheath to FPCON Charlie, suggesting a form of terrorist action is likely. This comes hot on the heels of the US withdrawing its B1 bomber planes from RAF Fairford last month, after a suspected Iran-related terror incident near the air base. Washington has sought to play down these moves, suggesting that they are precautionary or routine measures. But there is a growing sense that Britain’s most important ally feels we cannot be relied upon to keep its assets safe on our own soil. The US does not seem to have similar concerns about its airbases Ramstein in Germany or Moron de la Frontera in Spain, where some of the Mildenhall planes were relocated.

UK - Yesterday it was reported that sales of canned goods were up 83 per cent; bottled water 37 per cent. “Be ready,” says the defence secretary, Wes Streeting. Only it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the government. I’m all for personal responsibility. But what is Whitehall doing? Britain is facing dangers from cyber and drone attacks and disinformation campaigns; our undersea cables are vulnerable; shipping is threatened; extreme weather is on the way, as is, perhaps, the next pandemic. Who knows what Vladimir Putin is plotting or whether AI is coming for humanity. Yet the UK is not ready for a sustained period of disruption to food and fuel supplies, even as the alarms sound. European supermarkets suffered a cyberattack causing their freezers to overheat to 50C, ruining fresh and frozen produce. Open AI tools discovered a flaw in the programming language PHP, which runs 70 per cent of websites.

USA - Of course the truth is that the cost of living is most definitely not “up about 4 percent over the last 12 months”. It is going up way faster than that. Since 1978, the way that the federal government calculates the rate of inflation has changed over and over again. When federal bureaucrats make these changes, the goal is almost always to make the rate of inflation appear to be lower. On the official BLS website, they actually have a list of all of the revisions that they have made to the way that the Consumer Price Index is calculated. [Over 60 modifications since 1978!] It is so important to understand that the way that the rate of inflation is calculated today does not even come close to resembling how the rate of inflation was calculated during the Jimmy Carter era. If we did calculate the rate of inflation the exact same way that we did back then, it would be well into double digit territory.

GERMANY - More than 413,000 workers across Germany’s crisis-hit industrial sector have taken part in strikes and rallies this week, demanding higher pay and job security, trade union IG Metall announced on Friday. Germany’s largest union reported more than 2,800 actions nationwide since Sunday, hitting carmakers, engineering companies, metal producers, and suppliers after three rounds of wage talks failed to produce a deal. New strikes hit more than 30 companies in and around Nuremberg on Friday, including Bosch, Siemens, MAN Truck & Bus, and Schaeffler. The walkouts are part of a wider wave of strikes and labor protests sweeping Europe.

RUSSIA - Donald Trump says he has settled eight wars, but the biggest prize – peace between Russia and Ukraine – still eludes and frustrates him. His negotiators, Steve Witkoff, the property developer, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, will head to Abu Dhabi this week for the first face-to-face peace talks with Russia and Ukraine since February. This three-way negotiation has squeezed out the other key players with skin in the game: the Europeans. Trump himself said last week that the deal “might involve all of Europe”. Although the Europeans are sidelined, their priority is clear: a peace deal must neutralise the threat of Russian aggression. But the Americans have muddied the waters. Reports suggest they are pushing for a peace deal that would controversially include the resumption of Russian gas exports to Europe. The Europeans have spent the past four years painfully weaning themselves off an addiction to Vladimir Putin’s energy bounty. They are now in the final furlong of a legally binding process to shut out Russian gas permanently.

USA - President Trump has suggested the midterm elections were not “honest” after previously insisting he would respect the results that delivered a crushing defeat to the Republicans. “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” he posted on Truth Social on Monday. “How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” Polling before the midterms put the Democrats on course for sweeping victories but they ended up understating the scale of the national swing to the party by about four percentage points. The scale of Democrat victories was so large that in Texas James Talarico, a Senate candidate, had more ballots cast for him in early and postal voting alone than his Republican rival Ken Paxton garnered overall.

USA - The US military pulled a number of aircraft from a Royal Air Force base after reportedly receiving a threat from Iran. Three refuelling tankers were diverted from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to Germany on Monday, with at least six US planes in total relocated. The evacuation was prompted by a new threat from Iran which US officials were alerted to on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal. The base in Suffolk hosts the 100th Air Refuelling Wing, the only permanent US refuelling wing in the European theatre. It operates the KC-135 Stratotanker.

UK - Britain’s grid operator has paid a gas power station more than £1 million an hour to keep the lights on following a slump in wind power. Langage Power Station, near Plymouth, was paid the equivalent of £1.4 million an hour on Monday evening, according to market transparency data. Gas-fired power plants across the country were paid millions of pounds to cover potential shortfalls in electricity after low winds cut the output of renewables. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) was paying around £1,500 per megawatt hour on Monday to at least three power stations to cover the evening peak in demand. That was about 10 times the average.

IRAN - When supermarket fridge temperatures across France began to soar in October, spoiling millions of euros worth of food, suspicion fell almost immediately on Russia. But on Monday, the French foreign minister identified an Iranian hacking group as responsible for the cyber attack, which he described as “unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression”. Shahid Kaveh, the accused cyber warfare unit, sits deep inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The commander of the shadowy formation has a $10 million (£7.4 million) US bounty on his head and now faces an international arrest warrant from a Western government. For years, the unit has lurked in the networks of its enemies, pre-positioning malware inside water plants, power grids and fuel systems from the United States to Israel. Last month it arrived inside the fridges of Europe’s supermarkets. The fridge attacks, which began in France and extended across Europe, thrust into public view a unit that normally operates in the dark. Western governments have said it is among the most dangerous instruments in Iran’s arsenal of deniable digital war.

UK - Around four in five Britons view Israel as a serious threat to world peace, according to a new survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), published last week. A total of 78% of respondents said they view Israel as a serious threat, compared with 48% 20 years ago. The percentage has also increased a full 10% in the last year. The number of respondents who said they view the US as a serious threat to world peace was similar to the number for Israel, at 74%. This had doubled in just two years, with the same question receiving 35% in 2024. The country deemed the highest threat to world peace was Russia (89%), followed by Israel, Iran (75%), the USA, North Korea (66%), China (62%) and Saudi Arabia (34%). Israel has surpassed North Korea in the last year.

USA - There were 47 local referendums on data centres this week; 46 voted to make it harder to build the giant facilities that are crucial to artificial intelligence. Combined with a blue wave that elected many anti-data centre Democratic candidates, the results sent a straightforward message. Despite the promise of jobs and investment, Americans do not want data centres where they live – if they want them at all. Pollsters had anticipated a backlash to Donald Trump’s war in Iran and the cost of living, but the scale of the rebuke to data centres ignited a global market panic. The Nasdaq suffered its worst day for more than a year and a half, with $2.5 trillion wiped off the world’s top tech companies. The resounding vote has led to fears that the AI boom and data centre building blitz – loudly championed by Trump – may now go into reverse, with serious implications for America’s economy and its hopes of being an AI leader. In the wake of the vote, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, promised to listen to local communities and protect energy costs. Observers believe that now they have won power, Democrats will moderate their positions. “AI’s importance to US economic growth and competition with China will remain powerful drivers of expansion”.

USA - Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for. As the American midterm elections results rolled in we can be certain that everyone in the Labour Government was hoping Donald Trump’s Republican Party would get thumped. They were no doubt toasting a string of victories for his opponents, and relishing the embarrassment of his allies in this country. But they had probably not counted on the stock market rout that has followed the humbling of the president at the polls. If that turns into a wider collapse, Britain is going to be hit as hard as any other country – and it will torpedo Andy Burnham’s administration just as it was getting started.

USA - “It’s the economy, stupid.” When it comes to US elections, quoting this utterance from Bill Clinton’s ebullient adviser James Carville is almost a cliché. But Carville’s insight is deservedly famous. Writing the phrase on a whiteboard in 1992, as an internal reminder to campaign staff, Carville wanted his team focused on voters’ “pocketbook concerns”, rather than getting distracted by other issues, during the race against incumbent George Bush Snr. And it was, of course, “the economy, stupid” which did it for Donald Trump’s Republicans in last week’s midterm elections. Back in 2024, Trump secured his second White House term after promising to control inflation. But some of his most important policy decisions – most notably, his “liberation day” tariffs and war against Iran – have increased price pressures instead. It was this economic fallout that shattered Trump’s support base, with Democrats turning over Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

SAUDI ARABIA - A Houthi missile struck a skyscraper in Riyadh’s financial district. The projectile hit the offices of Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, tearing a gaping hole in the side of the building. The strike marks another escalation in the kingdom’s war with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Houthi fighters have attacked Riyadh airport in recent weeks while gaining territory against Saudi-backed forces along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Video footage from Riyadh on Sunday morning showed smoke rising from the damaged Al-Aqiq commercial tower. Clips showed significant structural damage to the upper floors, with glass shattered and damage to part of the tower’s façade. Information on missile attacks is tightly controlled but one witness on the ground told the AFP news agency: “Aramco tower in KAFD has been targeted, that’s the sure thing.”

MIDDLE EAST - Syria and Saudi Arabia signed a defense cooperation agreement Wednesday during Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Riyadh, expanding their growing partnership as Saudi Arabia seeks regional military support against attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement. The agreement between the countries’ defense ministries was signed during talks between al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on November 4. Neither government disclosed its provisions, leaving unanswered whether cooperation will involve military training, intelligence sharing, or operational assistance. The agreement comes as Damascus considers a broader role in regional security arrangements.