Editions

Sports

Football's best-player prize is decided by a jury of journalists. The favourites spent this week campaigning for their votes. →

The Ballon d'Or is handed out in London on 26 October by journalists picked by a French magazine, and its rules leave most of the judging to them. So Kylian Mbappe, Lamine Yamal and Harry Kane all spent this week explaining what their own season should be worth.

Personal Money

American shoppers paid most of the tariffs. The $166bn refund is going to importers instead. →

The US Supreme Court cancelled the emergency tariffs in February. Only the companies named on the customs paperwork can claim the money back, and most of them cannot say what any one shopper paid.

Gaming

Nintendo, Konami and Capcom kept 97 in 100 staff. In 2026, 96 of every 100 games jobs lost went in North America and Europe. →

A tracker kept since 2022 counts 57,628 games jobs gone. An interview published this week says 96 of every 100 of this year's losses were in North America and Europe.

Finance News

France says its debt will hit 119.3% of a year's output, the highest since 1978, and lenders make it pay a full point more than Germany →

France's finance ministry published the numbers on Saturday: debt at 119.3% of output this year, 121.7% in 2027, and a deficit that misses its own target. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wants 54 billion euros of cuts through a parliament he does not control. On Friday the extra France pays over Germany to borrow for ten years passed a full percentage point for the first time since 2012, and the ratings firm Scope cut its credit score.

Mind & Body

A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activity, and after two medicines fail the next one works for about one person in 25 →

Half of people with epilepsy stop having seizures on the first medicine they try. After two have failed, the chance the next one works is about 4%, and more than thirty medicines have not changed that.

World News

Iran sends the US three conditions for ending the war, through Qatar →

Iran's security chief says Qatar has handed the US government a list of terms - stop the fighting, release the frozen money, lift the naval blockade - and that Iran is waiting for an answer while preparing for a decisive war.

Food & Farming

US diesel hits a record $6.44 a gallon, in the weeks farmers must bring in the corn →

The American diesel price set a record on 18 September, 68% above a year ago, at the point in the year when the corn and soybean harvest has to be cut and moved. The railways that carry the grain have more than doubled their fuel charge.

Cybersecurity

Hackers changed pump settings at two small Colorado water systems. Each one serves fewer than 200 people. →

Colorado's governor's office says foreign hackers reached two privately owned water utilities in late August, switched off alarms and altered how the pumps ran. The providers found it and fixed it themselves. The state will not say who did it.

Climate & Energy

The world will burn less oil this year, and no government decided it →

Global carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is set to fall about 0.5% in 2026, even though coal burning is up, because the war around the Gulf made oil too expensive to buy.

Biotech & Longevity

Fiji has declared HIV a national emergency. One adult in 60 now carries the virus, against one in 167 five years ago. →

Fiji recorded 2,016 new HIV diagnoses in 2025, sixteen times its 2019 figure, and only 22% of the people who have the virus are getting the drugs that hold it down. The country is now writing a law so it can hand out clean needles for the first time.

Information Technology

Apple's new Mac software has no switch to turn off its AI. It went out to every supported Mac on Monday. →

Apple shipped iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate with a rebuilt Siri, fixed a record 326 security flaws between them, and quietly dropped the setting that let Mac owners delete Apple Intelligence from their disk.

Space

Satellogic is switching from selling satellite pictures to watching places and reporting what changed →

The Barcelona company that photographs the Earth has expanded its contract with the US Navy's research office, and is moving from selling a picture when you ask to watching a list of sites and saying what is different.

Space

Three European space start-ups raised about $1bn in two weeks, and Impulse Space added $308m in the US →

Open Cosmos, The Exploration Company and EnduroSat raised about $1bn between them, and Impulse Space's round grew to $808m. Investors put much of the rush down to SpaceX's $86bn share sale in June.

Personal Money

The typical US household earned a record $87,460 in 2025. The official poverty rate fell, and a fuller measure did not move. →

The Census Bureau's yearly report shows the middle household's income up 2.6% after rising prices, and 1.5 million fewer people under the official poverty line. A second measure, which adds food aid and subtracts medical bills, stayed at 13.1%, and older Americans did worse on it.

Climate & Energy

Cuba's power grid collapsed again on Friday, leaving about 9 million people without electricity →

It was at least the sixth island-wide blackout since the US cut off Cuba's fuel in January. Also today: a judge restored a $7 billion solar grant programme, EDF plans ten small reactors, South Korea's chipmakers refused to pay their utility up front, and floods killed three people on the Navajo Nation.

Food & Farming

India's rice harvest faces its biggest fall since 2009 as a record El Nino dries the monsoon →

India's rice exporters expect about 10 million tonnes less rice this year after the monsoon brought 15% less rain than normal, while the government sits on a record 59.6 million tonnes in store.

Finance News

Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway's chairman at 96. His son Howard takes the chair, and Buffett keeps about 30% of the votes. →

Warren Buffett, 96, handed the chair of Berkshire Hathaway to his son Howard and still holds about 30% of its votes with 13% of its shares. Also today: the Dow's worst week since March, Saudi Arabia cuts Europe's crude, and Paramount nears a deal with the states.

Cybersecurity

Fake recruiters working for North Korea got into 30,000 computers. Police in four countries have now described how. →

Agencies in Japan, Australia, Germany and the US say North Korean teams posed as employers, had job seekers run files during interviews, and took $10.71m from about 7,000 crypto wallets.

Mind & Body

Coeliac disease is the gut's defences attacking wheat, and most people who have it have never been tested →

In coeliac disease, pieces of gluten the stomach cannot break down set off an immune attack on the gut lining. New UK rules from July 2026 let some adults skip the biopsy, but an estimated 75% to 83% of people with the disease have never been diagnosed.

Gaming

Remedy's Control Resonant scores 84 with critics, six days before it goes on sale. It swaps the heroine for her brother, and the gun for close fighting. →

Reviews for Remedy's Control sequel landed on 18 September and split sharply, from 9 out of 10 to 2 out of 5, while Sony's Wolverine sold 1.9 million copies despite weak reviews and a Shanghai court made a company pay for copying 63 Genshin Impact voices with AI.

Biotech & Longevity

One brain implant let two paralysed men speak and gesture at the same time, through an avatar. A wireless one let a Michigan woman phone her grandchildren. →

A team at UCSF read words and hand movements from the same brain implant in two men who cannot move or speak, and a company, Paradromics, said its wireless implant gave a 68-year-old woman back conversation.

World News

Houthi attacks set off the first air raid alerts in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital →

Saudi Arabia sounded air raid alerts for its capital for the first time since the Houthis, an armed movement that rules northern Yemen, stepped up their attacks. Europe's leaders warned of Russian attacks, Trump signed his Russia sanctions law, and Xi Jinping's US visit is being prepared.

Sports

F1 will run 10 sprint races next year, even at Monaco. It has still not said where this season ends. →

Formula One's 2027 calendar swaps practice sessions for extra races on ten weekends and opens in Bahrain, while the last two races of 2026, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, wait on the war with Iran. Also: the Asian Games open without an athletes' village, two star quarterbacks bet on next year's pay, and a $230m contract keeps a struggling quarterback on the field.

Information Technology

OpenAI's newest model now takes more business AI spending than Anthropic's. Anthropic is weighing a new model before its share sale. →

Two spending trackers put OpenAI's Astra ahead of Anthropic's Claude, six days after Anthropic's chief asked the industry to slow down, while many businesses say last year's cheaper models do most of the work.

Climate & Energy

Drones have shut Saudi Arabia's oil pipeline around Hormuz and cut output at half of Russia's biggest diesel refineries →

Three pumping stations on the pipeline that carried 4-5% of the world's oil are damaged, and Ukrainian strikes have closed or slowed three of Russia's six top diesel plants. The shortage has moved from crude oil to the fuels made from it.

Cybersecurity

Revolut sent customers' passports to a hacker posing as a government agency. The hacker now wants $3m. →

Revolut, the app-only bank, answered requests from a real but stolen Italian government mailbox, reportedly for about five months. A hacker is now publicly demanding $3m. Also today: an attacked Cisco network gatekeeper, unpaid UK online-safety fines, a data broker losing its website, and hackers claiming to be inside Russia's election systems.

Food & Farming

The world will use about 30 million tonnes more corn than it grows this season, the widest gap in over 30 years →

America is harvesting its second-largest corn crop ever, and the world is still short. Grain harvests fell in the big exporting countries, Brazil is planting soybeans at the slowest pace in 20 years, and corn prices rose a record 16% in August.

Biotech & Longevity

The first treatment for Sanfilippo syndrome, a disease that takes speech and thinking from young children, is approved in the US. It was tested on 17 children. →

The US drug regulator approved Ultragenyx's Fayuvi, a one-time gene therapy, after treated children scored higher on thinking tests than untreated children from medical records; the rest of the day was drug deals that pay little up front, a measles standoff in Pennsylvania and the end of a record US parasite outbreak.

Personal Money

The US central bank raised its rate for the first time since 2023. Card interest follows within weeks; savings rates may not. →

A credit card's rate is tied to the US central bank's rate and moves within a billing cycle or two. A savings rate is set by each bank, and in the last round of rises the biggest US banks barely moved theirs.

Finance News

Japan's central bank raised its rate to 1.25%, its highest since 1995. Two of its nine members voted no, and the yen fell. →

The Bank of Japan raised rates on Friday, two days after the US did and a day after Britain's central bank held but warned it may raise next. Oil fell for a third day as Saudi Arabia shipped crude around its damaged pipeline.

Mind & Body

Nearly everyone carries the virus behind glandular fever, and in multiple sclerosis the immune cells hunting it also attack the coating on the nerves →

Multiple sclerosis almost never happens without an earlier Epstein-Barr infection. New studies show how the virus points the immune system at the coating of the nerves, and why some researchers now want antivirals tested.

Gaming

Kojima names Physint's star on Xbox's stage in Tokyo. PlayStation had dropped the game in June. →

Xbox's Tokyo Game Show broadcast ended with Hideo Kojima casting Bill Skarsgard in Physint, the spy game PlayStation cancelled in June, and opened the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign.

Sports

College football lets schools pay players $21.6m. The richest are spending about $50m. →

A count of every big school's player budget shows Ohio State and Oregon near $50m and Boston College near $10m, as the US Senate starts debating a law that would roughly double the limit.

Space

NASA's Moon orbiter found the largest new crater ever seen. A rock hit the Moon in 2024, and nobody noticed for more than a year. →

A space rock dug a crater 222 metres wide on the Moon in spring 2024. No telescope saw it, and a NASA scientist found it in routine pictures more than a year later.

Information Technology

The EU wants no social media under 13 and one hour a day at 13 and 14. First, every app must find out who is a child. →

The European Commission proposed the EU Kids Act on Thursday: age checks on every new account, no addictive design for anyone under 18, and chatbots off by default for children. It now needs the European Parliament and 27 governments to agree.

World News

UN investigators find a likely US war crime at an Iranian school, and crimes against humanity by Iran's rulers →

A UN-backed mission says US strikes on a school in Minab and a sports hall in Lamerd were war crimes, and that Iran's government committed crimes against humanity against protesters, days before both governments meet at the UN.