September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
US Treasury sanctions Turkey's Golden Global Bank over Iran ties
The US Treasury designated Turkey-based Golden Global Bank and two affiliates on Friday, accusing them of moving Iranian oil revenue and facilitating tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force. The action is part of Operation Economic Outcast, the campaign Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched on August 24. Bessent said he hoped no further banks would need sanctioning, an outcome he tied to how quickly other governments stop supporting Tehran.
Venetoclax shrank the SIV reservoir in macaques and the effect held for months
A team at Emory University added venetoclax, a cancer drug that blocks the Bcl-2 protein, to antiretroviral therapy in SIV-infected rhesus macaques, and the infected-cell reservoir fell faster and stayed lower for months after the ten-day course ended. The peer-reviewed Nature Microbiology study is the first proof-of-concept for the approach in a primate model, two human trials are already under way, and the researchers caution the short course may have limited the size of the effect.
Volkswagen board approves Future Plan 2030 with about 50,000 job cuts and a halved model range
Volkswagen's Supervisory Board unanimously approved Future Plan 2030, a group-wide reduction of about 50,000 positions and a roughly 50 per cent cut to the model range by 2035, targeting a 9 per cent operating margin. Engadget reported the cuts stack on top of about 50,000 positions the company already agreed to shed with unions in 2024, pushing total reductions toward six figures, while decisions on four German plants whose capacity exceeds demand by 500,000 units are due by 2027.
Yemen's army retakes hills west of Taiz as Houthi offensive kills over 120
Yemeni government forces said they recaptured the al-Khazan and al-Makahna hills in Jabal Habashi district west of Taiz on Friday, a day after Houthi fighters seized them in a broad offensive aimed at high ground overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the port of Mokha. An AFP tally put the dead at more than 120 since the assault began, up from an earlier count of 81, in what officials called Yemen's worst clashes in years.
Young chimpanzees develop distinct regional call patterns as they grow
A team led by Kassandra Giragosian at Queen Mary University of London studied 30 infant and juvenile chimpanzees from two separated populations and found their grunts, whimpers and laughter grew more population-specific with age. Juveniles showed the pattern in all three calls, but infants only in their laughs and grunts. Nautilus reports the team traced this to the whimper's alarm function and compared it with human vocal development, where laughter varies more across languages than distress calls.
Zelensky confirms first Kyiv visit for envoys Witkoff and Kushner
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have confirmed tentative dates for their first visit to Kyiv, with meetings also planned in Moscow, after months in which the diplomatic push stalled as Washington's attention shifted to Iran. The envoys have shuttled to Moscow repeatedly since Trump's peace effort began but never visited the Ukrainian capital; Zelensky said he had already spoken with them in July to try to reinvigorate the process.
13 missiles over Jordan, 10 brought down; the tankers off Khasab have no such answer
The air-defence chain around the bases held: Jordan's armed forces said they engaged 13 ballistic missiles and destroyed 10. The two seafarers killed this week were aboard a loaded tanker off Khasab, where no interceptor is waiting.
A brain the size of a poppy seed, now readable end to end
The whole nervous system of a male fruit fly has now been drawn. Many questions about behaviour turn from an argument into a lookup, while the map itself comes from one fly and still has gaps at its edges.
Campbell's cut the one payment it still controlled
Campbell's cut its dividend 36 per cent to pay down debt in the same week the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield touched 4.818 per cent. The dividend was the only claim on cash the company could reduce on its own terms; the interest bill is priced somewhere else.
Equinix bought Nordic capacity and dated an inference programme, with megawatts missing from both
One transaction is measured in dollars, one programme in metros and model counts. The unit that would size the capacity appears in neither announcement.