Evening Briefing for November 9

The most significant development today is the resumption of peace talks on Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, scheduled for Tuesday, November 10 and Wednesday, November 11, with United States mediation. According to NPR it is the first three-way round, with Russia, Ukraine and the United States, since February, and the Kremlin has announced it is sending senior diplomats and military officials.¹ French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that France will be present and that Europeans will be represented, without saying who will go. He added that no agreement affecting European security architecture can be conceived, or even discussed, without them.¹ The clarification matters because, according to the Kyiv Independent, European influence in the negotiations has so far been limited and its representation has changed from one occasion to the next, between national delegates and the European Commission. Giorgia Meloni has called for a dedicated EU envoy so as not to “condemn Europe to irrelevance”, while Antonio Costa has spoken of a participation organized in a clear and unified way.¹ France, Germany and the United Kingdom, together with a European Union delegation, are preparing to take part in Abu Dhabi.²

The war in domestic politics and cybersecurity

The negotiations are entangled with the campaign for the 2027 French presidential election. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise, said on Saturday that territorial concessions cannot be accepted without consulting the populations on both sides of the border. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi replied that the border was already set by the 1991 referendum and that referendums held under occupation are instruments of annexation.² Barrot had called Mélenchon a “Kremlin spokesman” and had in effect called for him to be disqualified from the offices he aspires to. In mid-October Marine Le Pen had said that, if elected, she would halt aid to Kyiv, which she estimates at 6 billion euros a year. The Ukraine file is therefore becoming a field of electoral battle, just as Paris promises a seat at the table in Abu Dhabi.²¹ Then there is the cyber front. The personal data of Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani ended up on the dark web, and Meloni spoke of pro-Russian hackers. Tajani clarified that he does not blame the Moscow government and said the issue will be discussed at the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris, with Barrot agreeing to put it on the agenda.³ Tajani cited episodes of “hybrid warfare” in Europe and South America and spoke of possible joint initiatives. The G7 meets at the same time as the negotiations open; one possible reading is that digital intimidation against governments that support Kyiv falls within the broader framework of European security.¹³

Climate: at COP31 the first clash is over funding

COP31, the UN’s annual climate conference, began in Antalya, Turkey, ninety minutes late and, according to greenMe, will run until November 20. UN chief Antonio Guterres urged leaders to make a concrete commitment, recalling the months just past: heat waves in Europe, wildfires in Indonesia and floods in Nepal.⁴ The divide is between rich and developing countries over climate finance. The “work programme on climate finance”, born at COP30 in Brazil, made it onto the agenda after a hard line from developed countries, as Greenpeace reported. The African request to triple funding for adaptation did not become a stand-alone item.⁴ The question of money is the same one that marks the rest of the day: aid to Kyiv in the French debate and the costs that Japanese companies cannot pass on to prices. Seen this way, COP31 begins when the competition for public resources and for corporate budgets is already under way.⁴²⁵

Artificial intelligence and markets: confidence under scrutiny

Nvidia’s board of directors has opened an independent inquiry into Jensen Huang, who remains CEO, following New York Times reports of an alleged close relationship with a Chinese chip buyer who, according to American analysts, would report information to Beijing. The board says it has no reason to believe that national security or trade secrets have been compromised. Analysts cited by Reuters say the affair could weigh on a stock that is already falling sharply, amid uncertainty over how long the AI expansion will last.⁶ On the same day Geoffrey Hinton, the 2024 Nobel laureate in Physics, told the Guardian he expects an “AI Chernobyl” this year or next, for example a blackout or a financial system shut down for a week. It is a forecast, not a fact. Hinton regards this summer’s intrusions against Hugging Face, which involved AI agents, as a first warning sign.⁷ Apple, too, is moving on both fronts. According to Bloomberg, new CEO John Ternus is pushing Craig Federighi to speed up on AI, while the company says increasingly autonomous agents will make macOS’s Full Disk Access, the permission to read all data, riskier.⁸⁹

In brief

In Japan, Uniqlo and Saizeriya adjusted their prices and then backtracked or apologized. According to the report, after years of deflation consumers are resisting price rises, even now that inflation has returned following the energy shocks tied to the wars in Ukraine and Iran.⁵ The Chinese building materials group Huaxin has agreed to buy almost all of the capital of CSN Cimentos, 99.99%, for 1.64 billion dollars. The Brazilian company covers about 21% of the domestic cement market.¹⁰ In rugby league, Australia beat Samoa 44-12 and next Sunday in Brisbane will face New Zealand in the World Cup final.¹¹

This article was written by artificial intelligence from the sources cited, without human review. Automatic newsroom by Redazia.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Colloqui di pace ad Abu Dhabi, la Francia: ci saranno anche gli europei, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Kiev risponde a Mélenchon: nessun referendum nel Donbas, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Dati di Tajani sul dark web, Meloni accusa hacker filorussi, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩ ↩²

4. COP31 ad Antalya: si apre la conferenza ONU sul clima, con subito uno scontro sui fondi, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Giappone, perché alzare i prezzi resta difficile anche con l’inflazione, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩ ↩²

6. Nvidia avvia un’indagine indipendente su Jensen Huang: il CEO resta in carica, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩

7. Hinton e la «Chernobyl dell’AI»: cosa ha detto il Nobel al Guardian, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩

8. Accesso completo al disco su macOS: Apple stringe sugli agenti IA, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩

9. Apple, Ternus spinge Federighi ad accelerare su software e AI, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩

10. Huaxin compra CSN Cimentos: la Cina entra nel cemento brasiliano, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩

11. Rugby league, Australia batte Samoa 44-12 e va in finale mondiale contro la Nuova Zelanda, aitoday.it, 2026-11-09 ↩