August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Schnabel urges on-chain central bank money while Bitcoin opens above 80,000 dollars
Isabel Schnabel, a member of the European Central Bank's Executive Board, argued at the Jackson Hole symposium on 28 August that central banks should issue tokenised reserves natively on programmable platforms and said stablecoin products cannot expand liquidity elastically under stress. Bitcoin opened the same day at 80,261.86 dollars, its highest opening price since 15 May.
Settlers trapped a Qusra family inside a home as Ramallah sought protection for al-Mughayyir
On 29 August settlers besieged a house in Qusra and at least four people were trapped inside; Israel's military said it removed rioters. The same day Ramallah called for international protection over a nearly three-week blockade in al-Mughayyir. BBC reporting tracked over one week says settler violence in the occupied West Bank is heading for a record year and spreading into new areas.
Sony and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic as EDM producers call out Suno tracks
On 28 August two major music publishers sued Anthropic in California over song lyrics in Claude's training data, seeking up to 150,000 dollars per work in a complaint citing tens of thousands of compositions. In the same week EDM producers are posting videos naming tracks they believe models made, relying on ear-level tells such as stutter and hiss. The lawsuit rests on allegations not yet tested in court, and the producers do not claim proven production methods.
SpaceX ships its recovered Starship back to Texas for inspection
Starship lifted off from Starbase on 24 July, flew for about an hour and came down intact off Christmas Island; it is the first Starship to survive a full flight in one piece. Recovery took a month, and the company puts the return trip at several months more. SpaceX thanked its recovery team for working through difficult conditions so engineers could reach the vehicle and its data; Starship is the lander NASA has contracted for its Artemis Moon missions.
Spanish inflation jumps to 4.3 per cent while the KOF barometer reaches 106.7
INE's flash consumer price indicator rose to an annual 4.3 per cent in August, seven tenths of a point above July, with the harmonised European Union measure at 4.5 per cent. The KOF Swiss Economic Institute's leading barometer gained 2.5 points to 106.7 in August, clearly above the 100-point growth threshold.
STAREE cut major cardiovascular events 30 per cent in people over 70
The European Society of Cardiology and Healio report that in 9,971 people over 70 with no known cardiovascular disease, atorvastatin 40 mg daily cut major cardiovascular events by 30 per cent while disability-free survival was unchanged. The event rate was 6.0 per cent on atorvastatin against 8.3 per cent on placebo. Muscle, liver and diabetes-related side effects were more common on the drug; serious adverse events were balanced. The results were presented at ESC Congress 2026.
Terrorist-connection aggravation added to Turnberry indictment; hybrid-threat warnings continue
Seven people indicted at Glasgow's High Court over damage at the Trump Turnberry golf course face an offence aggravated by a terrorist connection; the preliminary hearing was put off to October. The indictment says slogans including Gaza is not for sale were painted on the grass and a building on 8 March 2025 and a sprinkler system was damaged. Western officials said they expect Moscow to keep up cyber-attacks, sabotage and assassination attempts short of direct military action.
The man who scraped Cara's archive is now co-building a tool to protect artists
Cara, run by photographer Jingna Zhang and home to about 1.5 million artists, was hit by three major scrapes from 13 August; the first scraper announced he had pulled an archive of 12 million works for under 10 dollars. WIRED reports the same person regretted it and accepted working with Zhang on an open-source tool to protect artists. The game archive The Cutting Room Floor went offline after a denial-of-service attack it ties to a user who evaded its language-model block.
The SEC proposes EU debt for its exemption list as the CFTC penalises a White House staffer
The SEC published a proposal on 28 August to add European Union debt obligations to the foreign-government list covered by Exchange Act Rule 3a12-8, with a 60-day comment period. The CFTC settled charges the same day against Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator who traded KalshiEX event contracts on words the president might use, using speeches he saw before delivery.
The umbra covered 96 per cent of the lunar disc in this partial eclipse
In the partial lunar eclipse of 27-28 August, Earth's umbra reached 96 per cent of the lunar disc in a deep partial eclipse. At the peak, shadow coverage hit 96.3 per cent. The shadowed surface reddened through Rayleigh scattering while a thin crescent stayed in direct sunlight. The partial phase began at 02:33 GMT on 28 August, and skywatchers shared images from Hungary to North Carolina and from Madrid to Istanbul. The Moon was this month's Sturgeon full moon; Tycho crater stayed visible as shadow advanced.