Morning Brief: Zelenskyy says Europe joins next peace round and a record prisoner swap is coming; Iran claims hit on U.S. radar in Bahrain; Sen. Scott summons Lutnick and Huang; Starship flies today
Plus Iran's stand-off with nuclear inspectors, the Army officer accused of spying for Russia, DOJ's North Korea crypto seizures, the Cramer hold on Trump nominees, and today's Supreme Court conference.
6 AM CT video brief · 1:56Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your 6 AM World Brief for Friday, November 13. Zelenskyy: Europe joins next peace round; biggest prisoner swap coming. Iran claims hit on U.S. radar in Bahrain; unverified. IAEA "increasingly concerned" about Iran's Isfahan plant. Sen. Scott calls Lutnick and Huang to testify Dec. 3. Starship Flight 15 targets 4:45 p.m. CT today from Starbase, Texas. Justices confer today; orders expected Monday. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: Localized flooding concerns across Northwest Washington on Saturday. Showers and thunderstorms will develop across the Four Corners into the southern High Plains and Texas through Saturday. Our opinion. Europe should carry more of the load for peace, Iran should let inspectors in, and officials owe sworn answers on chips and China. Full stories and sources at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at Casement Aerodrome outside Dublin on Thursday evening, hours after their Kremlin meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Kyiv Independent reported. Zelenskyy said Europe would sit on the negotiating team at the next meeting and that the coming exchange would be "the biggest exchange of war prisoners yet"; Kushner said Putin is "willing to give it a try" on European participation, while Witkoff gave no date or place for the next round. Overnight, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that further multilateral meetings are being prepared, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it destroyed a U.S. early-warning radar in Bahrain, its first such claim in months, and said a tanker hit a mine in the Strait of Hormuz; neither claim could be independently verified, the AP reported. Al Jazeera reported the Guard called the strike a response to an attack on a telecommunications tower in Sirik on Thursday, and that Iran's navy said it shot down a U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone over the strait. Reuters reported Iran's military said four tankers were hit by explosions after ignoring its warnings, with at least 10 ships hit in the first 10 days of November after 37 attacks in October, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency this month that talks on resuming nuclear monitoring cannot proceed while it faces threats of military attack, citing what it called threats by the President of the United States, according to a confidential IAEA report circulated to member states on Friday and seen by the AP. Al Jazeera reported the agency says it is "increasingly concerned" about an underground uranium-enrichment plant at Isfahan that Tehran has not let it inspect.
The U.S. Army officer arrested Tuesday near Gloucester on suspicion of spying for Russia is Lt. Col. Brandon Tyner, who was stationed at NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters in Britain, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing the Wall Street Journal. According to the report, Tyner spoke with British authorities posing as others in a sting operation, U.K. authorities are expected to charge him next week, and he is expected to face U.S. military trial afterward; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any connection. British police said the arrest, on suspicion of offenses involving protected information and assisting a foreign intelligence service, was made with the U.S. Army and the FBI.
SpaceX says Starship Flight 15 could launch as soon as Friday, Nov. 13, from Starbase, Texas, pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 4:45 p.m. CT. SpaceX says it is the first flight planned to return both Starship and its Super Heavy booster to the launch site for a catch, and the ship is to deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites during a flight of more than 22 hours. Space.com reports that if the full mission runs, the ship would land back at Starbase on Saturday, Nov. 14.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott sent letters Thursday asking Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to appear before the panel on Dec. 3 or face "all tools at our disposal, including subpoenas," the Washington Examiner reported. Scott cited "recent public reports that raise significant national security concerns" and the Commerce Department's role in export controls, after Huang resigned over an affair with an executive U.S. officials appear to suspect has ties to Beijing. A White House official said President Trump "maintains complete confidence" in Lutnick.
The Justice Department said Thursday federal authorities have frozen more than $2.7 billion in cryptocurrency linked to the roughly $6 billion Binance theft and obtained court authorization to seize or restrict more than $1.2 billion of it, the Washington Examiner reported, attributing the theft to North Korean military hackers the FBI calls "TraderTraitor." The FBI also said it seized online infrastructure behind "FaceStealer," which investigators say stole more than $400 million over 18 months using fake video calls, the New York Post and Examiner reported.
A senior White House official told the Washington Examiner talks with Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who is slowing most executive-branch nominees over a Biden-era wetland conservation rule he calls an illegal "land grab," are "headed in the right direction." Cramer said he is "pretty confident" the standoff will be resolved "not too long after Thanksgiving," and he is not holding judges or Health and Human Services nominees. The Examiner noted Republicans have only the lame-duck session to confirm nominees after Democrats gained at least eight Senate seats.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Thursday the Justice Department has no criminal investigations into what incoming senators or House members have said about scrutinizing the Trump administration, telling reporters, "That is not a crime to say that," the Washington Examiner reported. He did not say whether department headquarters approved a U.S. attorney's letter directing Sen. Richard Blumenthal to preserve records from his probe of White House ballroom donors, or whether Blumenthal is under investigation.
The justices meet in a private conference on Friday to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review, with orders expected Monday at 9:30 a.m. ET, SCOTUSblog reported; the conference includes the government's appeal over the President's asylum-ban proclamation. The next argument session opens Nov. 30 with Crowther v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which asks whether Title IX lets employees of federally funded schools sue for sex discrimination in employment, according to the Court's docket and SCOTUSblog.
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