And US consumer sentiment has sunk to its lowest ebb since April.
Happy Wednesday and welcome to your morning wrap of the latest political and business headlines from around the world.
First up, a Kyiv official has said Ukraine supports the essence of a US-brokered peace deal to end the war with Russia, the ABC reported.
However, the most sensitive issues are still to be discussed between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The head of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov, has said Ukraine and the US have reached a “common understanding of the key terms of the agreement discussed” and he was hopeful the two presidents could meet soon to finalise it.
The BBC quoted Umerov as saying he hopes Zelensky will visit the US at the “earliest possible date in November” to complete the final steps.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt posted on X that “tremendous progress” had been made, but work remained.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that an amended peace plan must reflect the “spirit and letter” of the talks between Vladimir Putin and Trump during their summit in Alaska in August, CNN reported.
Lavrov, who was speaking at a news conference in Moscow overnight, had welcomed the original version of the peace plan, which surfaced last week and was seen as heavily favouring Russia. Following US-Ukraine talks in Switzerland last week, the original 28-point plan was trimmed down to a 19-point plan, which removed some of the provisions deemed unacceptable by Kyiv.
Sergey Lavrov.
To the United States now, where consumer confidence has hit its lowest point since April and soured on future prospects, with worries growing over jobs, CNBC reported.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index for November slumped to 88.7, well below economists’ expectations of 93.2. The expectations index and consumers’ view of their current situation also fell, and the number of workers who said that jobs were “plentiful” slid 6%, down from 28% in the prior month.
The board’s chief economist, Dana Peterson, said consumers were notably pessimistic about business conditions six months from now. “Mid-2026 expectations for labour market conditions remained decidedly negative, and expectations for increased household incomes shrank dramatically, after six months of strongly positive readings.”
The softening of sentiment is consistent with other measures of consumers’ attitudes and coincides with public statements by several Federal Reserve officials who believe further interest rate reductions are needed.
In business news, Nvidia’s shares fell after The Information reported that Meta is considering using chips designed by Google.
Shares in the chip giant tumbled by as much as 7% overnight before recovering to trade down 4% following the report. Google, on the other hand, was up 4.2%.
The Information reported on Monday that Meta was considering using Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) in its data centres in 2027. Meta may also rent the units from Google’s cloud unit next year.
“Google Cloud is experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units); we are committed to supporting both, as we have for years,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.
Nvidia is the market leader with its GPU, becoming the main piece of hardware underpinning the wave of AI infrastructure investment.
As CNBC mentions, while Nvidia’s dominance is unlikely to be dislodged in the near term, Google’s TPUs add further competition to the AI semiconductor market.
Staying with business, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba beat analysts’ quarterly revenue estimates overnight as its investment in one-hour delivery helped drive more users to its shopping apps, Reuters reported.
The company reported revenue of ¥247.8 billion (NZ$62.2b) in the second quarter compared with estimates of ¥242.65b. However, its adjusted profit of ¥4.36 per American depository share missed estimates of ¥5.49. Net profit fell 53% to ¥20.61b, a fall attributed to investments, though it still exceeded analysts’ forecasts.
Alibaba’s results come amid a costly battle in China’s instant retail sector, or quick commerce, where major players are pouring billions into one-hour delivery services to capture market share.
At the same time, Alibaba has been investing heavily in AI and said in February it would allocate ¥380b over three years.
Finally this morning, an Italian man is under investigation for benefit fraud and hiding a body after allegedly dressing up as his dead mother to claim her pension, The Guardian reported.
The man, from a town near the northern Italian city of Mantua, allegedly claimed thousands of euros in pension payments after the death of his mother in 2022. Instead of reporting her death, he allegedly hid her body.
The police were alerted to the man after the 56-year-old allegedly disguised himself as his mother in an attempt to renew her ID card at a local council office.
The town’s mayor, Franceso Aporti, told Corriere della Sera that the man shuffled into the office dressed as an old woman. “He wore lipstick, nail polish, jewellery and old-fashioned earrings, and had a dark brown bob of hair.”
Authorities compared an official photo of the woman with that of her son and became suspicious. The police then inspected the man’s home and found her body hidden in the laundry room, investigators said.
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