September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
ChatGPT, Claude and Grok broke down within hours of each other, and no link was confirmed
ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, three of the most widely used chatbots, went down within hours of each other on Thursday. OpenAI blamed a routing error, Anthropic said an infrastructure issue knocked out Claude.ai, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and its API for three hours, and SpaceX's Grok status page reported ongoing trouble. Cloudflare denied any fault of its own, and neither OpenAI, Anthropic nor xAI said whether the outages were connected.
Eni wins exclusive rights to Venezuela's Junin 5 as US licences open the sector
The US Treasury's OFAC issued three amended general licences on 2 September opening Venezuelan coal, mineral and gold activity, contract negotiation and related supplies to US persons. Days later, at a ceremony led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Chevron valued a deal to develop two more of Venezuela's Orinoco fields at $7 billion, Italy's Eni obtained exclusive exploration rights to the Junin 5 field, and GE Vernova agreed to repair Venezuela's power grid.
Euro-area producer prices jump 1.6 per cent in July as annual inflation accelerates to 5.8 per cent
Industrial producer prices in the euro area rose 1.6 per cent in July from June, driven mainly by a 5.6 per cent jump in energy costs, Eurostat reported. A report on the release said annual producer-price inflation accelerated to 5.8 per cent from 4.6 per cent in June, while the core rate excluding energy edged up only marginally to 3.1 per cent, and the monthly rebound beat the 1.2 per cent economists had expected after June's 0.3 per cent fall.
Germany investigates two substation attacks in 24 hours as RWE loses five generating units
German police opened a terrorism investigation after improvised explosives were fired at the substation at Preilack in Brandenburg early on Tuesday. Authorities are also examining a second attack the same night at Bergheim in North Rhine-Westphalia, where perpetrators are suspected of placing conductive material on overhead lines. RWE lost five generating units at two coal-fired plants. Interior minister Herbert Reul said officials were weighing a foreign state against left-wing extremism and looking for a link between the two attacks.
Grant Macdonald's Sentinel-1 radar tracking follows emperor penguin colonies through the Antarctic winter
Durham University geographer Grant Macdonald and colleagues used European Space Agency Sentinel-1 radar imagery, which does not need sunlight, to follow three emperor penguin colonies through the dark Antarctic winter from 2017 to 2024. The Atka Bay colony moved onto glacier ice in early spring in seven of the eight years even though the sea ice stayed stable, a pattern the team says needs further study.
Greek letters on the ring tie the Herodium seal to a Judean worker serving Pilate's office
A copper-alloy signet ring dug out of the Herodium fortress in the 1960s carries Greek letters split around an image of a pottery vessel. Catherine Bonesho of the University of California, Los Angeles argues in Palestine Exploration Quarterly that the letters transliterate the Latin form Pilato, with an omicron standing where Greek would want an omega. On her reading the ring belonged to a Judean worker who sealed material sent to Pilate's office rather than to the prefect himself.
Hurricane Lowell rose to Category 5 south of Hawaii, and its turn north stays uncertain
The Central Pacific Hurricane Center confirmed Lowell rapidly intensified into a Category 5 hurricane on September 2, with maximum sustained winds near 260 km/h about 715 km south of Hilo, then eased back to Category 4. Forecasters kept it a major hurricane through the weekend ahead of a sharp northward turn they call more uncertain than usual. Karina held Category 4 strength farther east and Marie became a hurricane off Baja California.
Iran calls the US strike that hit a wedding at a Kuhestak home a war crime
Shrapnel from a missile hit a wedding held at a home in the coastal town of Kuhestak, and the Iranian Red Crescent Society reported four dead and 67 injured. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei called the strike a war crime, while a Centcom spokesperson said the US military never targets civilians. Iranian authorities said another 14 people were killed elsewhere, and the tolls have no independent confirmation. Tehran answered with missiles and drones aimed at US targets in Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain.
Iran's Red Crescent takes the Kuhestak wedding strike to the ICC
Iran's Red Crescent Society has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the missile strike that hit a wedding at a home in Kuhestak, arguing the site's civilian character demands an independent inquiry. The Red Crescent's own tally puts the toll at 4 dead and 67 wounded, while Iran's health ministry separately reported 18 dead and 142 wounded from Tuesday's wider wave of strikes. Centcom maintains it never targets civilians, a position Iran's foreign ministry rejects.
Japan's 30-year bond auction clears at 4.100 per cent inside a continuing government debt sell-off
The Ministry of Finance sold 30-year Japanese government bonds on 3 September. The lowest accepted price of 98.65 yen per 100 yen of face value corresponds to a yield of 4.100 per cent. Competitive bids reached 1,728.1 billion yen against 456.2 billion yen accepted. The sale falls inside a week in which government debt weakened in Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom as well as the United States.