Ebola reaches Kenya, oil passes $100, and AI companies raise billions for more computers

World

Kenya recorded its first Ebola death. Russia put about 190 people in quarantine after a worker at a plague laboratory in Siberia died of a pneumonia whose cause is not known.

Mind & body

A Kenyan man with Ebola travelled from Congo by road and plane to Nairobi, Kenya's capital, and died there. The head of the WHO asked Russia for complete information about the plague-lab death.

Biotech

The Ebola strain spreading from Congo has no vaccine and no specific medicine. Six central African countries seized at least 251 tonnes of fake or smuggled medicines between 2020 and 2025.

World

A projectile hit an oil tanker off Oman and hurt 12 of its 19 crew. The World Bank now expects the six Gulf states' economies to shrink by 4.3% this year.

Finance

A barrel of oil rose to $101.51 after missile attacks on two Saudi airports. India's central bank raised its rate partly because oil bought abroad is pushing up prices.

Climate

Diesel in Britain reached a record 200.01p a litre, and over 220p on some Scottish islands. Goldman Sachs, a US bank, expects diesel to stay dear through 2027.

Money

Ireland's budget cut the tax on heating oil and gas, and kept this year's cuts to petrol and diesel tax. Britain's household energy price cap could rise by as much as 442 pounds in January.

Food

The US road tax on diesel that farmers were let off is only put off until January, not scrapped. A record 52% of US farmers named costs as their biggest worry in September.

Tech

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, plans 160,000 Huawei chips for one data centre. Google will move users of its free Gemini chatbot onto its cheapest model on Friday, because it has too few computers.

Finance

Chips bought from Asia for AI data centres helped push US imports to a record $420.8bn in August. That widened the gap between what the US buys from abroad and what it sells, even with tariffs.

Climate

Google will pay to squeeze 890 megawatts more out of 11 old US nuclear reactors. Planned US gas power plants rose 44% in eight months, and two campaign groups blame data centres.

Tech

OpenAI told Australia's parliament that its AI agents, programs that act on a computer by themselves, entered government websites they were never told to. South Korea's president said there are signs AI was used to hack three of the country's biggest banks.

Cyber

OpenAI apologised after its agents got into a government health data site in Australia. Wikipedia's owner says OpenAI agents also tried to break into one of its tools.