Wednesday, 23 September 2026
277 stories · 12 beats · 4 signals
Signals
Diesel in the US reached a record $6.53 a gallon, up more than 70% since February. France asked the European Union to delay a methane rule so its refineries can make more fuel.
A barrel of oil fell below $100 after a report that Iran offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The US is weighing a ban on selling its diesel abroad.
The average price of diesel in the US passed $6.50 a gallon, a record. Sulfur for fertiliser went from $46 a ton in 2024 to over $1,000 in July, and a shortage shut two fertiliser plants.
Only two tracked cargo ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Saudi Arabia started pumping oil again through a pipeline that goes around it.
Petrol in Britain rose from about 130p a litre in February to about 170p. The European Central Bank raised its interest rate to 2.5% because prices are rising with the war.
Telix, an Australian maker of radioactive cancer drugs, agreed to buy its German rival ITM for at least $1.65 billion. Novartis agreed to pay a company in China up to $900 million for one early drug.
Microsoft moved its Halo games to Activision, the Call of Duty publisher it owns. It began talks on closing Ninja Theory, the studio behind Hellblade, after two deals to sell it fell through.
Russia's president handed Nestle's six Russian factories and Auchan's 229 Russian supermarkets to a manager picked by the state. Nobody paid the owners, who keep them only on paper.
Paramount started selling $49 billion of debt to pay for buying Warner Bros Discovery. Twelve US states had settled their lawsuit against the deal.
Schwab fell 6.1% and Allstate 5.5% after Meta's AI app Muse topped the download charts, because investors fear it will shop around for their customers. Shopify, which lets Muse buy from its shops, rose nearly 7%.
Anthropic and OpenAI cut the price of their newest AI models by 40% to 50%. Four paying customers are suing them, saying the labs broke competition law when they agreed to slow down together.
Banks set out rules for AI programs that shop on a customer's behalf. Programs that steal passwords now also copy the login keys that AI coding helpers keep.
AbbVie signed a research deal with Iambic, a company that uses AI to design drugs. A team of AI programs proposed a new lung-cancer drug.
North Carolina's regulator refused Duke Energy a $584 million gas turbine meant partly for data centres. California passed laws making data centres pay for the grid upgrades they need.
Accelevation, which makes power and cooling kits for data centres, wants to raise up to $720 million by selling shares.
Big AI companies are expected to borrow a record $420 billion next year. Lenders have started to get choosier about which of those loans they take.
12 editions
World
The truth: Trump used the UN stage to tell Iran it can have a deal after the US midterm elections on 3 November or face destruction, and that afternoon his envoys spent three hours passing messages to Iran's foreign minister through mediators.
Finance
The truth: Schwab, Allstate and the big US banks fell 3% to 6% on Tuesday because investors changed their guess about what Meta's new app will do to their customers.
Tech
The truth: Anthropic and OpenAI cut their prices on Tuesday because business customers were moving routine AI work to cheaper models, including free-to-download ones from Chinese firms.
Mind & body
The truth: Congo's Ebola outbreak is caused by a species of the virus with no vaccine and no approved treatment, and the one Ebola vaccine on the shelf was made for a different species.
Climate
The truth: A University of Chicago lab expects this year's El Nino heat to cause up to 451,000 extra deaths by February, and most of them will be in hot, poor places such as the Sahel, where people have little cooling, water or medical care.
Space
The truth: NASA is now choosing its Moon partners by whether their part arrives before China reaches the south pole, and a European lander promised for the mid-2030s failed that test.
Biotech
The truth: Drug companies spent the week buying medicines they did not invent.
Money
The truth: Britain froze the income tax allowance at 12,570 pounds and kept raising the state pension every April, so next April the full new state pension is expected to pass it.
Sports
The truth: The PGA Tour, an American golf tour, owns the Presidents Cup and runs both teams, and the International team has won it once in 15 tries.
Gaming
The truth: Microsoft is shrinking Xbox by moving its best-known games to the teams that release most often, above all Activision.
Food
The truth: Russia's government took control of Nestle's six Russian factories and Auchan's 229 Russian supermarkets by decree, without paying, and handed them to a Moscow company set up in 2024.
Cyber
The truth: ShinyHunters says it broke into the FBI's jobs website and took data on staff and job applicants, and the FBI has said only that it is investigating.