The Midday File — The Desk’s Report
Abu Dhabi Ends With a Prisoner Exchange Agreed and the Land Untouched, the Chips Are Bought Back at Midday, and a Wreath Is Laid at Arlington
The news at midday: the week’s one negotiation produced its one agreement, on prisoners, and adjourned without a date; the market that sold the chips on Tuesday bought them back on Wednesday morning, in a session with no bond market to answer it; the capital kept a holiday—a wreath at 1100, remarks at 1130, no votes in the House—and the two Senate counts moved by paperwork and by pile, not by margin.
The Midday in Brief
Midday closed the Abu Dhabi file with an agreement on prisoners and nothing else signed, read a market buying back what it sold on Tuesday, and kept the capital’s holiday while the counts and the investigations ran on underneath it. The second day of the three-way talks ended after less than two hours with a large prisoner exchange agreed—the biggest humanitarian release, in Mr. Kushner’s words, with the numbers to be finalized on Thursday—in the Associated Press account and the closing account filed below; no ceasefire was agreed, no joint statement was published, and no date for a next round was announced. The envoys travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet President Putin and then to Dublin to meet President Zelenskyy. In New York, at 0949 the S&P 500 stood up 0.76 percent and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.16 percent on CoreWeave’s earnings and a chip rebound, while the Dow stood down 0.13 percent and the bond market stood closed for Veterans Day, in the Reuters morning account filed below. At Arlington National Cemetery the president and the first lady took part in the national wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at 1100, and the president’s remarks followed at 1130, on the White House schedule filed below. The eight articles against Secretary Hegseth rest in the Judiciary Committee, whose chairman was elected the House Republicans’ leader for the next Congress on the same day as the referral. Thirteen American aircraft stand relocated out of RAF Mildenhall on a threat no official has publicly named. Neither Senate race was called.
Abu Dhabi at Noon: Under Two Hours, an Exchange Agreed, the Numbers Left for Thursday
The talks the overnight edition filed as entering their second day are, at noon, over, and their whole announced product is a prisoner exchange. Wednesday’s session wrapped up after less than two hours, against nearly four hours on Tuesday, in the TASS and Interfax reports carried in the day-two account filed below. Mr. Kushner’s sentence is the agreement’s text as published: “One of the positives is we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we’re going to finalize the numbers tomorrow.” The Russian delegation head, Mr. Medinsky, and Kyiv’s delegation head, Mr. Umerov, both confirmed the planned exchange. On the size, the accounts give ranges and not a figure: more than 1,000 prisoners on each side, in the Russian general’s account carried in the talks account filed below; between 1,000 and 1,500 in the plans President Zelenskyy announced; and an exchange in two to three weeks, in the TASS report carried in the wire account filed below. The exchange is to run under the facilitation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the closing assessment filed below. A date for the exchange itself has not been published by either side.
Everything else the two days were convened for stands where Tuesday left it, and the principals said so in their own registers. No ceasefire was agreed; Foreign Minister Lavrov, on the margins, rejected the European demands for a ceasefire framework, in the closing assessment above. Mr. Kushner said progress had been made on postwar security guarantees and that no agreement could be reached until the territorial dispute was settled, in the talks account above. Mr. Medinsky said the discussions centred on security guarantees for Ukraine and for Russia alike, and that his side had no contact with the European representatives present in the capital. Mr. Arakhamia, for Kyiv, said the Russian side had arrived with rigid positions and spoke of really big progress on other issues he could not detail, and of hope for a breakthrough by the end of the year. Europe’s seat remains the file’s standing disagreement: the European governments, the European Union and NATO were in Abu Dhabi consulting the Ukrainian delegation, and Mr. Umerov’s delegation was to meet them on Wednesday; Moscow opposed their presence at the table itself. The process now moves by airplane: Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff meet President Putin in Moscow on Thursday, November 12, and then fly to Dublin to meet President Zelenskyy, in the Associated Press account above; a European Political Community summit convenes in Dublin on November 12 in one account, and an informal summit of European Union heads of government is scheduled in Dublin on Friday, November 13, in another. No joint statement had been published at noon, and no date for a next round of talks has been announced.
The War at Noon: Seven Wounded in Two Cities, and a Drone Count That Will Not Sit Still
The fighting ran through the closing session, and the midday file carries the overnight exchange of strikes in the two capitals’ own counts, which do not agree. Russia struck the southern Zaporizhzhia region and the eastern city of Kharkiv overnight, wounding seven civilians and damaging property, in the Associated Press account above. On the other direction, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 627 Ukrainian drones overnight, 150 of them over the region around St. Petersburg, according to Governor Drozdenko, and that the drones started a fire at the port of Ust-Luga, injuring three workers, in the same account. The overnight edition carried the governor’s own earlier count of 92 drones shot down over the Leningrad region in the attack on the terminal and the refineries; the midday figures—627 in the ministry’s national count, 150 in the regional one—are printed beside it in the Cocked Hat, unreconciled. The industry figure the overnight edition carried stands unamended in the morning file: Ukrainian attacks since late October have disrupted about 30 percent of Russia’s refining capacity. The talks and the strikes proceeded on the same hours for a second day; neither file mentions the other.
The Markets’ Reading at Noon: The Chips Bought Back, the Dow Left Behind, No Bonds to Read
Wall Street’s midday reading reversed Tuesday’s in the technology shares and declined to reverse it anywhere else. At 0949 ET the S&P 500 rose 57.14 points, or 0.76 percent, to 7,578.07, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 288.47 points, or 1.16 percent, to 25,354.34, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 73.82 points, or 0.13 percent, to 52,162.06, in the Reuters morning account above. Six of the eleven S&P sectors stood positive, technology and energy leading; advancing issues led on the Nasdaq by 1.57 to 1 and ran about even on the New York Stock Exchange. The instrument behind the move was an earnings report: CoreWeave, the cloud firm whose results the morning accounts read as a test of the AI buildout’s returns, rose 12.7 percent after saying it would become profitable in the first half of 2028 on an adjusted basis; Nebius rose 12.5 percent and Applied Digital 5.2 percent beside it. Nvidia edged 2.4 percent higher after shedding about $430 billion in the last two sessions; the Philadelphia semiconductor index jumped 3 percent to a one-week high, with Marvell up 5.5 percent and Micron up 6.8 percent. The volatility index fell for a fourth straight session, to 18.48. The Anthropic terms filed Tuesday—825 million shares at $70 to $78, a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion—stood in the morning file as context, examined and unpriced until trading opens near November 19.
The session ran without its usual second witness, and the rate question it left open on Tuesday it left open again. The United States bond market is shut on Wednesday for Veterans Day, on the exchanges’ and the industry association’s calendars, in the holiday account filed below; the stock exchanges trade a full session, 0930 to 1600. With no cash Treasury trading, the morning’s only rate instrument was the futures pricing: traders see a December increase as a certainty, with an 11.5 percent chance of the half-point move, in the CME FedWatch figures carried in the Reuters morning account above—against 10 percent in the overnight futures print and 15.3 percent in a Tuesday instrument, all three printed in the Cocked Hat. Governor Waller’s stated test stands met by Tuesday’s core print of 0.3 percent, and the committee’s decision stands untaken. Oil, the session’s other witness, rose: Brent changed hands between $92.01 and $92.81 across the morning’s prints, up from Tuesday’s two-month lows, on the Hormuz file printed below.
Washington at Noon: A Wreath at 1100, Remarks at 1130, and a Committee Room Across Town
The capital’s official day was the holiday’s, and it ran on the printed schedule. Wednesday is Veterans Day, a federal holiday: the House has scheduled no votes, the Supreme Court is closed, and banks and federal offices are shut, in the Washington account filed below. The president and the first lady departed the White House for Arlington National Cemetery and took part in the 2026 National Veterans Day Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at 1100, with the president’s Veterans Day remarks at 1130 in the Memorial Amphitheater, on the White House daily guidance carried in the schedule account filed below; live coverage of the ceremony ran through the morning, in the live account filed below. The observance is the 73rd annual National Veterans Day Observance; the vice president and the secretary of veterans affairs were among those attending, in the observance account filed below. The president’s proclamation, issued Tuesday and filed below, states the administration’s figures for the year: a record 3.1 million disability claims processed, the claims backlog cut by more than 70 percent, 47 new health care facilities opened, and nearly 52,000 homeless veterans housed, in the morning brief filed below; Secretary Collins, speaking Tuesday, put the backlog reduction at nearly 70 percent since January 2025, in the interview account filed below. The text of the president’s remarks is not in the midday file; the desk’s own record of the day stands in the Special Report filed this morning outside the watches. One piece of business from the cemetery’s neighbourhood stands in the file: nine members of the Kennedy family have joined the legal effort to block the president’s proposed 250-foot memorial arch near the cemetery, in the observance account above.
The impeachment file produced its morning-after fact across town: the committee that received the articles is chaired by the man the House Republicans chose, the same day, to lead them in the next Congress. The articles against Secretary Hegseth rest in the Judiciary Committee after Tuesday’s referral vote of 211 to 204; the committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, in the referral account filed below. House Republicans elected Mr. Jordan their minority leader for the 120th Congress in a closed-door vote of 106 to 73 over Mr. Scalise, the Associated Press reported in the same account; Speaker Johnson is stepping down after the midterm losses, in the morning briefing filed below. Eleven Democrats were absent from Tuesday’s vote, in one account filed below; seven more votes against the referral would not have sunk it on the full count in any case, and the margin stands as cast. Leader Jeffries has indicated the Democrats will reassess the matter when they take the majority on January 3, when this Congress’s articles expire and new ones would be required. Settled: the referral, the chairman, and the leadership. Open: January.
England at Noon: Thirteen Aircraft Moved on a Threat No One Has Named
The week’s second security file is a movement, confirmed Tuesday and still unexplained at noon. The United States Air Force relocated aircraft from RAF Mildenhall in eastern England on Monday because of a threat, a United States official told the Associated Press; the official described the move as proactive rather than reactive and did not identify the threat’s source, in the Associated Press account filed below. The Military Air Tracking Alliance counted 13 aircraft departing for bases in Scotland, Spain and Germany—a combination of Osprey aircraft and midair refuelling tankers, some permanently based at Mildenhall and some there on rotation; the base hosts the 100th Air Refuelling Wing, the only permanent American refuelling wing in Europe. The counts beneath the 13 differ by observer and are printed in the Cocked Hat: ten KC-135 tankers identified in the flight-data accounts, three Ospreys moved to RAF Lakenheath in one account, twelve aircraft in total in another. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the move, said the threat related to Iran, citing people familiar with the matter, and reported both Mildenhall and Lakenheath raised to Force Protection Condition Charlie, the second-highest level; a British paper’s understanding is that there was no direct or imminent threat to Mildenhall, in the relocation account filed below. The relocation follows the withdrawal of American bombers from RAF Fairford less than two months ago, while police investigated a suspected plot linked to Iran. The American command in Europe said coordinated measures are being taken to protect personnel and declined details. In a separate file the same morning, federal prosecutors have indicted three men accused of being Iran-backed operatives in connection with plots in Britain, in the morning briefing above. The desk prints the movement as confirmed, the threat as reported, and the connection between them as unestablished in any official statement in the file.
Iran and Hormuz at Noon: Oil Up on the Strait’s Count, and One New Sentence From Tehran
Neither capital moved on the Iran file in the morning; the strait’s traffic figures and one sentence from Tehran are the midday file’s whole addition. The sentence: Iran’s security chief said Tehran would not allow enriched nuclear material to leave the country, carried in the Reuters morning account above as the occasion for part of oil’s rise. The figures: 37 vessels were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waterways during October, the highest monthly total since the war began, on the Washington Institute figures carried in the oil account filed below, and 10 attacks have been recorded so far in November. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency reported a tanker struck by an unidentified projectile on Tuesday about 19 nautical miles northeast of Lima, Oman, the crew safe; Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy said separately that two tankers caught fire after hitting naval mines on an unauthorized route through the strait, a claim no other account in the file confirms. Brent rose through the morning on the accumulation—$92.01 a barrel at one print, $92.53 at another, $92.81 in the account that puts the rise at 1.4 percent—recovering from the two-month lows touched Tuesday, when the same barrel settled at $91.49. Preliminary industry data put American crude inventories up about 9 million barrels in the week ended November 6, and the Energy Information Administration expects Brent to average about $100 in November and December if the supply constraints persist, in the markets account filed below. The standing sentences stand: Secretary Rubio’s, that the blockade and sanctions make major combat unnecessary; Tehran’s, that no negotiations with the Americans are under way; and the Saudi East-West pipeline, struck Monday, kept flowing at about four million barrels a day in the last account in the file. No agreement on reopening the strait exists.
Jerusalem at Noon: The Committee Chairs Are Named, and the Week’s Work Is Assigned
Jerusalem’s midday addition is a set of names for the machinery that runs before a government exists. Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc has named incoming member Roy Folkman to chair the Arrangements Committee—the temporary committee that organizes a new Knesset’s work—and Liran Avishar Ben-Horin to chair the Finance Committee, beside Matan Kahana for speaker and Mr. Liberman for the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in the appointments account and the comparison account filed below. The committee composition is to be discussed and finalized in the Arrangements Committee’s deliberations this week and submitted to the plenary for approval next Wednesday, November 18. The speaker vote stands set for Tuesday, November 17, at 1600, with the Arab lists’ announced votes putting Mr. Kahana ahead on the count published Tuesday: the prime minister’s bloc 53, Mr. Eisenkot’s coalition 48, the Arab parties 19, and 61 required. Mr. Eisenkot’s mandate runs 28 days from November 8, to December 6, with a possible 14-day extension. Mr. Netanyahu remains prime minister. Settled: the chairs, the dates, the arithmetic as announced. Open: the government.
Kraków at Noon: The Mourning’s Last Day, and No Findings Published
Kraków’s file at noon is the overnight file, carried forward an hour: the instruments are running and nothing from them has been published. The examination of the suspect’s own body, expected separately on Tuesday, has produced no published finding in the morning file; the detailed forensic opinions on the nine victims may take weeks, in the investigation account filed below. The legal course stands as the prosecutors stated it: proceedings directed at the dead man personally will be discontinued—he died before charges could be presented or questioning held—while the wider investigation into motive, ideological influence and possible assistance continues, in the same account. The city’s mourning, declared by the mayor through November 11, runs its last day today; the two days of national mourning ran on November 8 and 9. Justice Minister Żurek’s sentence—a very strong thread of right-wing extremism, on the computer traces and the silencer found in the car—stands beside the prosecutors’ stated position that motive and influence remain unresolved, unjoined by them, as it stood at midnight. The desk files the absence of findings as the midday fact, and fills none of the space where findings will go.
The Count at Noon: Paperwork in Mississippi, a Larger Pile in Alaska
For a tenth day neither Senate race was called, and Wednesday’s part in both files, at noon, is administration rather than arithmetic. In Mississippi, the secretary of state’s office reported on Tuesday that 76 of the state’s 82 counties had submitted uncertified results and four counties had certified theirs, in the live results account filed below; all 82 counties must certify by Friday, November 13, and the secretary of state declares final results by December 3. The margin stands where Tuesday afternoon left it: Mr. Colom ahead of Senator Hyde-Smith by 2,607 votes out of 953,547 counted, in the Associated Press figures carried in the lead account filed below, and by about 2,700 in the running tally. Mississippi has no automatic recount provision. In Alaska, the counted pile grew without a new margin being published in the morning file: the latest tally in the live results account, stamped November 10, puts Ms. Peltola at 49 percent to Senator Sullivan’s 47.2 percent, with more than 245,000 ballots counted and 401 of the state’s 403 precincts reporting—against 218,641 ballots in the last count this paper printed, on which her lead stood at 2,517. The percentages imply a wider lead than 2,517; the account does not state the raw margin, and the desk does not compute one into print. Alaska’s next count is set for November 13 and its ranked-choice tabulation for November 18, if no candidate passes 50 percent. Democrats hold at least 54 Senate seats whatever the two races decide.
The Cocked Hat
Three bearings never give a point; they give a small triangle, and this paper prints the triangle. On the exchange, more than 1,000 a side in the Russian general’s account—his name spelled Sorin in one account and Zorin in another—between 1,000 and 1,500 in the president’s announced plans, the biggest release in the envoy’s, and agreed in principle in a fourth: one agreement, four sizes, the figure itself deferred to Thursday. On the drones, 92 counted down over the Leningrad region in the governor’s first account, 150 over the St. Petersburg region and 627 in the whole country in the ministry’s midday count. On the Dow’s morning change, a fall of 73.82 points to 52,162.06, which computes from a previous close of 52,235.88—four points above the closing table the midnight edition carried, and sixty-nine above the other; the S&P and Nasdaq changes compute exactly from the table the desk carried. On the December half-point, 10 percent in the overnight futures print, 11.5 percent in the morning FedWatch figures, and 15.3 percent in a Tuesday instrument. On Brent, $92.01, $92.53 and $92.81 across the morning’s prints. On Mildenhall, 13 aircraft in the trackers’ count, ten tankers and three Ospreys in the flight-data accounts, twelve in total in another. On Dublin, a European Political Community summit on November 12 in one account and an informal European Union summit on November 13 in another, with the envoys’ Zelenskyy meeting placed in the same city in both. Against the triangle, the midday’s single-valued facts are these: the Abu Dhabi talks ended with a prisoner exchange agreed and no ceasefire, no joint statement and no next date; the second session ran less than two hours; the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose at mid-morning while the Dow fell, and the bond market stood closed; a wreath was laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at 1100; the articles rest with Mr. Jordan’s committee, and Mr. Jordan leads his party in the next Congress on a 106-to-73 vote; thirteen aircraft stand out of Mildenhall on an unnamed threat; Mississippi’s counties file toward a Friday certification; and no Senate race was called. The log proceeds to the evening.