Editions

Personal Money

Spain's parliament votes down new protections for tenants, and tens of thousands march in about 50 cities →

Spain's minority government lost two votes on Friday on decrees to stop evictions and stretch leases, after an 87-year-old was evicted from the flat her family had rented since 1956.

Climate & Energy

A UK plan to prepare the countryside for wildfires from 2023 was never started, and over half of 29 fire services lack wildfire gear →

England's 2023 climate plan promised a wildfire programme that never began, and more than half of the fire services that replied lack wildfire gear after a record summer of fires. Elsewhere, warm Pacific water fed hurricanes and heat, FedEx bought 2,000 electric trucks, and US ocean monitors went back to sea.

Food & Farming

Brazil votes on Sunday in a near-tie between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro. The winner sets the rules on clearing the Amazon for cattle and soy →

Brazil picks a president on 4 October, with Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro both near 40%. Amazon clearing fell 45% under Lula; his rival promises fewer rules for farmers. Also today: China's 55% tax on Brazilian beef begins, wet cane holds back Brazil's sugar, US farm costs outrun farm prices, and England lets farmers refill reservoirs in a drought.

Space

ESA's chief says Europe will be short of rockets around 2030, as its member countries back a push for European astronaut flights →

Josef Aschbacher says Europe needs its own way to fly astronauts and more rockets of its own. Also today: Elon Musk joins a panel advising the US military, Apollo 13 flight director Milt Windler dies at 94, and black hole jets are caught stirring the gas around galaxies.

Biotech & Longevity

Bayer plans a $2.2 billion medicine plant in Ohio, days after the US began taxing some imported medicines at 100% →

Bayer's Ohio plant will make medicine ingredients from 2031, and the new US tax on imported medicines left cheap generic pills out.

Gaming

Jagex announces RuneScape 4, a new version of its 25-year-old online game, at RuneFest →

Jagex will run four RuneScape games at once and has not said how long the old ones last. Elsewhere, a used chip carried a cheater's ban, and Call of Duty and a US shop tied new rules to hardware and ID.

Finance News

Houthi missiles and drones set an Aramco refinery near Riyadh on fire on Saturday, two days before oil trading reopens →

Yemen's Houthis say they hit a Saudi Aramco refinery south of Riyadh, and Yemen's Saudi-backed government struck back at Sanaa. Oil last traded on Friday at $102.25 a barrel, so Monday is the first price after the fire.

World News

Ethiopia's army retakes Mekelle's airport as Tigray's rebel leaders leave the city →

Ethiopia's army and its allies took back the airport in Mekelle, Tigray's capital, and the TPLF's fighters and leaders were seen leaving the city. Yemen's war reached Sanaa and an oil site near Riyadh, Brazil votes in a close race, and Russia hit a second bridge in Kyiv.

Mind & Body

WHO says people now live almost as long as before COVID, while dementia has climbed from the 19th to the 5th biggest cause of death →

WHO's new estimates put life expectancy worldwide at 73.3 years in 2023, close to its 2019 level. Years lived in good health have not fully recovered, deaths from dementia have tripled since 2000, and anxiety and depression rose sharply per person after 2019.

Sports

England beat Croatia 7-0 in a stadium shut as a punishment for racism, where UEFA's own rules let 6,200 children in free →

UEFA closed Croatia's ground over its fans' racism, but its rules let in children under 14. England won 7-0, Croatia's worst defeat ever.

Cybersecurity

A suspected ShinyHunters hacker is detained in Jordan and is helping the FBI find the rest of the gang →

Jordan detained Saif al-Din Khader, known as Rey, a suspected member of the gang that says it stole data on almost every FBI agent. Sources say he is opening his devices to the FBI, and the gang's leak site went offline.

Information Technology

OpenAI's safety-report lead quits and says the company's culture is broken →

David Robinson wrote the safety reports for OpenAI's launches. He says the company still learns about its AI's dangers by releasing it and fixing what breaks, and the US Treasury Secretary answered that labs worried about danger should slow down themselves.

Climate & Energy

Britain sells a record 99,199 electric cars in September, as Ford's US electric sales fall 80% →

Britain makes carmakers sell a rising share of electric cars, and September set a record. In the US, where the buyer's tax credit has ended, Ford sold 80% fewer than a year ago.

Space

Britain's rocket start-ups slow down. Skyrora now aims for orbit in 2030, and bankrupt Orbex is sold to a Portuguese parts maker →

Skyrora pushed its first orbital launch back to 2030 and says it is spending slowly on purpose. Orbex's Scottish factory went to Portugal's Omnidea, a German rival got a UK launch licence, and Blue Origin asked to fly New Glenn 50 times a year.

Personal Money

Hammersmith and Fulham warns its council tax may rise 150% as England's new funding formula cuts its government grant by more than half; Wandsworth has floated 94% →

Six councils in and around London lose much of their government money and may lift bills past the usual 5% cap. Also today: UK diesel passes 2 pounds a litre, energy firms ask for winter help, Wales raises its minimum alcohol price, and US health cover gets dearer for 2027.

Food & Farming

Britain's worst bluetongue season on record: 2,201 farm cases since July, and all of Scotland becomes one restricted zone today →

Bluetongue, a midge-borne virus of sheep and cattle, has hit more British farms in three months than in the last three seasons together, and many animals were never vaccinated. World food prices reached their highest since November 2022, and Britain's diesel passed 2 pounds a litre.

Mind & Body

Christa Pike survived two doses of the sedative meant to execute her, and Tennessee has stopped executions while it finds out why →

Pentobarbital kills by quieting the part of the brain that runs breathing. Her lawyers say it went under the skin of her arm instead of into a vein, and she is on a ventilator.

Cybersecurity

Apple will add a new check to the Mac setting that lets an app read every file, after a columnist said Meta's Muse assistant read his private messages →

Apple says AI helpers make its "Full Disk Access" switch far riskier and will demand very explicit approval before any app gets it. Meta says Muse can only read Messages if a user turns on two settings.

Finance News

US employers added only 29,000 jobs in September and unemployment rose to 4.2%. Bets on an October rate rise faded, but ten-year borrowing costs rose again →

Shares rose on Friday because slow hiring makes a US rate rise this month unlikely, yet the rate on ten-year US loans rose for a fifth week. Also today: France's borrowing gap over Germany hits a 2011 high, euro-area prices rise 3.8%, Tesla beats forecasts, Volvo Cars scraps its outlook and Vietnam grows almost 10%.

Gaming

Fans use AI to copy and mix famous games in days, and Bethesda's owner orders an AI-made Fallout game offline →

A new AI model let fans pull famous games apart and stitch them together in days. ZeniMax took down a Fallout copy, a modder broke his own mod in protest, and Capcom said it will rebuild its game engine so AI can work inside it.

World News

The G7 agrees to release 100 million barrels of oil and diesel after the US threatens to stop selling diesel abroad →

Rich democracies will release 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel over four months, a day after the US threatened to cut off diesel exports; Trump then said the ban was never really on the table.

Information Technology

US charges a California man with smuggling $300m of Nvidia AI servers to China, and a computer shop now asks gamers for photo ID →

Prosecutors say Greg Lui sent servers full of restricted Nvidia chips through Malaysia and Singapore, and US officials say Nvidia missed warning signs. Also: OpenAI has warned more than 100 organisations that its AI agents may have reached their systems, Apple is tightening a Mac permission because of AI agents, and Anthropic warns would-be shareholders about the US government.

Biotech & Longevity

Advice to give Prozac to depressed children leans on one doubtful 40-child trial, a new analysis finds →

Re-running two major reviews without a 2006 trial from Iran made Prozac's large advantage over a dummy pill disappear. The authors ask guideline committees to look again, not doctors to stop prescribing.

Sports

The NFL suspends 49ers owner Jed York for six games and fines him $500,000, the same punishment it gave the Colts' owner in 2014 →

Half of York's ban had already passed when the NFL announced it. Also today: Manchester City lodge their appeal, college football's play-off reaches its TV deadline, and Wakefield play for their first Super League title.

Personal Money

The US SEC proposes opening private funds to more ordinary savers, and asks whether passing an exam should also let them in →

Private funds lend to companies or buy into firms that are not on a stock market, and many are sold only to people with $1 million or a high income. The SEC also wants fund advisers to be able to take up to a fifth of the gains.

Climate & Energy

New South Wales approves the biggest coal mine project in its history, digging until 2045, and 98% of its carbon will come from coal burned abroad →

The Hunter Valley mine's owners expect 809 million tonnes of carbon over its life, and climate rules count almost all of it in the countries that buy the coal. Also today: 21 US states sue over power-plant carbon rules, western Europe's hottest summer on record, and a US Supreme Court climate case on Monday.

Cybersecurity

Police shut down the KillSec extortion gang and arrest three people. Europol says a 16-year-old held in Spain is its suspected leader. →

Police from ten countries took over the servers and leak site of KillSec, a gang linked to about 1,000 attacks, and arrested three people in Spain, Britain and Romania. Also today: a Fortinet email filter under attack with no fix, malware at South Africa's air traffic body, and spies posing as AI policy experts.

Space

Google sends its AI chips into orbit for the first time, to test running AI on sunlight in space →

A SpaceX flight carried Google's first test satellite for data centres in space, with 129 other payloads. Crew-13 reached the space station in record time, and NATO will ask its members for space forces.

Finance News

The US tells Germany and France to release their emergency diesel or face a US export ban, and Europe meets on Friday to answer →

The US government told Germany and France to release diesel from their emergency stores, or risk a US ban on selling diesel abroad. It wants lower US fuel prices before the US elections on 3 November. European governments meet on Friday to agree a reply, while US home-loan rates jumped by the most in four years.

Mind & Body

People who use cannabis were about twice as likely to commit violence, in a review of 63 studies of more than 265,000 people →

Users were also about one and a half times as likely to suffer violence. The review shows a link, not a cause, and most of its studies came before today's stronger cannabis.

Information Technology

Micron says memory chips will stay short through 2028, and Samsung adds $100 to Galaxy phones already in shops →

Micron, one of three companies that make most of the world's memory chips, says AI servers will keep memory scarce for two more years, and phone prices are already rising. Also: Broadcom will lend Anthropic up to $42 billion, a US judge throws out two lawsuits over Google's AI answers, and California's attorney general demands answers from OpenAI.

Biotech & Longevity

US regulators approve the first heart valve that can be widened as a child grows, which may spare children repeat open-heart surgery →

Edwards Lifesciences' Autus valve goes in as small as 13 millimetres and is later stretched with a balloon to 22. It was tested in 62 children, with results so far covering six months to a year.

Sports

Rome, Cincinnati and the Canadian Open will pay women the same as men from 2027, so all seven of tennis's big joint events now do →

The WTA, which runs women's tennis, also cut the number of mid-level events its top players must enter. Men won $9.6m in prize money at Rome this year, and women $8.3m.

World News

The US sends a third aircraft carrier toward Iran, and Trump says Iran's offer to reopen Hormuz is not enough →

About 9,000 US sailors and Marines are sailing for the Middle East, and Trump says strikes could resume after the 3 November US vote. Iran has privately offered to let nuclear inspectors back if sanctions are eased.

Food & Farming

Greggs plans to shut four UK factories and cut up to 740 jobs, while its sales grow 7.7% →

Greggs, Britain's biggest fast-food chain, says closing factories near Penrith and in Kelso, Seaham and Enfield will cost about £60m and save about £20m a year. It raised its profit outlook the same day and warned that costs could rise faster in 2027.

Gaming

EU consumer watchdogs name nine game companies and say anything bought with coins must show its price in real money →

On 30 September the EU's network of national consumer authorities named Supercell, King, Mojang, Riot, Ubisoft and four others. It wants coin prices shown in money, and unspent coins refundable within two weeks.