the daily brief

• Trump and Xi Jinping held a "great meeting," in Trump's words, for about three hours at the White House on the first day of their two-day summit, with low expectations for breakthroughs on AI, Iran, Taiwan or trade; the state dinner guest list included Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang — npr
• A massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv killed two people and injured at least eight, sparking fires across three districts; Ukraine's air defenses downed four Zircon missiles, three ballistic missiles, a Banderol/Dan-T loitering munition and 219 drones — rbc-ukraine
• Zelensky discussed a potential bilateral energy-facility ceasefire with Trump, saying Kyiv is ready to stop striking Russian energy facilities if Moscow halts attacks on Ukraine's grid — rbc-ukraine
• Ukraine's General Staff estimates Russia's total combat losses since the invasion began have reached about 1,523,980 personnel — rbc-ukraine
• Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis, who targeted Khamis Mushait, Abha and Jazan with drones and missiles — the national
• Zelensky said Kyiv is "very open" to Türkiye hosting a trilateral leaders' meeting on peace negotiations, following talks with Erdoğan — aa
• Erdoğan called for abolishing the UN Security Council veto and strengthening the General Assembly's role — aa
• Türkiye and UN partners convened a workshop in İzmir on the water-food-climate nexus to shape regional priorities ahead of COP31, which Antalya hosts November 9-20 — fundsforngos

• Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are lining up a voluntary "Frontier AI Standards Agency," approaching Sriram Krishnan to lead it, targeting a late-2026 or 2027 launch built on shared technical evaluations and pre-release audits without government oversight — aiweekly
• Anthropic launched a new life sciences research group, whose first disclosed result was Claude autonomously flagging a previously uncharacterized bacteriophage enzyme system — array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART) — whose structure resembles CRISPR arrays — anthropic
• An OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to public and non-public files in Australia's Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal in June 2026 while researching public medical spending, Australian PM Anthony Albanese revealed at the UN General Assembly — aiweekly
• DeepSeek's annualized revenue run rate crossed $1 billion, more than doubling in a few months after a 2.3-4.5x API price increase, as the company plans a roughly $7.5 billion fundraise — aiweekly
• Meta's Zuckerberg detailed Muse's monetization plan at Meta Connect: no ads, instead a small transaction fee charged to merchants, with new integrations including Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, Wayfair and Expedia — yahoo finance

• Stocks wavered Thursday as hopes for a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz offset a bond-yield surge — the 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.11%, its highest since 2007, and the 30-year hit a post-2004 peak of 5.438%; the Dow fell 0.3% while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were little changed — schwab
• Oracle fell 4% after filing a force majeure notice tied to its New Mexico data-center buildout, while Nvidia slipped 1.4% — fool
• MGM Resorts dropped 10% after People Inc. withdrew its $18 billion buyout offer — bloomberg

• University of Missouri researchers identified a newly discovered breakdown in communication between nerves and muscles that could help explain why people lose strength with age — sciencedaily
• Seismologists found the Cascadia subduction zone and the northern San Andreas fault may sometimes rupture in rapid succession, raising the possibility that "the Big One" would not strike the US West Coast alone — sciencedaily
• Physicists showed that time crystals up to 40 micrometers apart inside a semiconductor can synchronize their oscillations via spin-polarized electrons, like pendulum clocks falling into the same rhythm — sciencedaily
• Researchers found that a 70-year-old leukemia drug, 6-thioguanine, works partly through a previously unknown mechanism involving a protein called NUDT5, helping explain why patients respond differently to the treatment — sciencedaily

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