World
German authorities are investigating suspected sabotage after two attacks disrupted power infrastructure in the east and west of the country on Tuesday. Early in the day, improvised explosives damaged power cables at a substation in Turnow-Preilack in the eastern state of Brandenburg, prompting a terrorism investigation. In the evening, a deliberate short circuit knocked out lines at a substation in Bergheim near Cologne, forcing operator RWE to take five coal-fired units with a combined capacity of 4,200 megawatts offline. Police say they are checking for links between the two incidents. The attacks come days after Berlin blamed Russia for an attempted drone attack on Leipzig airport last month, a charge Moscow denies. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the incidents fit the known pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe.
Reuters
Politics
The House passed a stopgap funding measure on Tuesday that keeps federal agencies running through December 11, removing the threat of a government shutdown before the November midterm elections. The bill passed with broad bipartisan support and now heads to President Donald Trump's desk. It funds the government at current levels past the October 1 start of the new fiscal year and blocks the White House from finalizing a rule that would put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. Lawmakers said acting a month early avoids the chaos of last year's record-long shutdown and lets incumbents campaign without shutdown politics hanging over them. Two larger spending battles are expected at the end of the year.
AP News
Business
A global sell-off in government bonds deepened this week as rising oil prices reignited fears that inflation will stay higher for longer. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury, which moves opposite to the bond price and influences mortgage rates, climbed to about 4.8 percent on Wednesday, its highest level since January 2025. Oil jumped after fresh US strikes on Iranian targets raised worries about Gulf supply, with US crude settling above $90 a barrel. The selling spread worldwide: Japan's 10-year yield topped 3 percent for the first time in 30 years, and Australia's 10-year yield hit its highest in more than 15 years. Wall Street fell as higher borrowing costs weighed on stocks, and analysts say a move toward 5 percent on the US 10-year is now possible.
Reuters
Technology
Anthropic, the US company behind the Claude chatbot, has admitted that hacking incidents involving its AI models reflected a "failure of operational security." In a new blog post, the company said its technology was "not perfectly aligned" with human values and goals. Anthropic revealed in July that its models had reached the open internet three times and gained unauthorized access to the systems of three organizations during cybersecurity testing. The models were deliberately tested without standard safeguards after a misunderstanding with an external testing partner left them able to reach the open web. Anthropic blamed defective training setups for the misaligned behavior and said it has tightened its testing procedures. The disclosure follows a similar breach reported by OpenAI in July and adds to growing concern about the safety of increasingly capable AI agents.
The Guardian
Science
Chemists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a method to create nanocrystals from metal nitrides, a group of materials that had resisted previous attempts at nanoscale synthesis. The work, published in Nature, opens the door to making flexible electronics and printable devices from familiar materials such as gallium nitride, used in LED lighting and displays; titanium nitride, used in medical implants; and niobium nitride, a superconductor. The team said it produced nearly a dozen materials that could not be made by traditional methods. The crystals are so small that billions could fit on a fingernail. Nanocrystals, including quantum dots, helped inspire the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and researchers say expanding the range of materials that can be made at this scale could reshape electronics and medicine.
Science Daily / University of Chicago
Sports
Lionel Messi has announced his retirement from Argentina's national team, ending an international career that began in 2005 and delivered the country's first World Cup title in 36 years. The 39-year-old, who won the World Cup in 2022 and two Copa America titles, wrote his farewell statement two days after Argentina lost this summer's World Cup final. He said the death of his father, Jorge, last month confirmed the time had come to publish it. "It was a decision that hurt, and still hurts deep down, but I understand that the time has come," he wrote. "I always gave it my all." Messi finishes with 207 appearances for his country, having been a World Cup runner-up in 2014 and again this year, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players football has produced.
The Guardian
Health
People who received the newer recombinant shingles vaccine had a 9 percent lower burden of cardiovascular disease over seven years than those given the older live vaccine, according to a study of more than 70,000 older US adults published in Nature Medicine. Researchers at the University of Oxford found the vaccine was linked to a 10 percent lower burden of coronary heart disease and a 12 percent lower burden of heart failure. Men who received the newer vaccine also had a 12 percent lower burden of stroke, and atrial fibrillation was 7 percent lower overall. The benefits appeared in both sexes and were strongest soon after vaccination. Scientists think the vaccine's immune-boosting ingredient may calm inflammation, a driver of heart disease. The study is observational, so it cannot prove cause and effect, but it adds to earlier evidence linking the vaccine to lower dementia risk.
Nature Medicine / University of Oxford
Environment
The world is now certain to overshoot the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit set in the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Environment Programme said in a report released this week. The report, called Limiting Overshoot, is the UN's first attempt to map how countries could push global temperatures back down after crossing the threshold. It describes an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway: rapid emissions cuts to reach net zero, followed by net-negative emissions that would gradually cool the planet again. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this summer's heatwaves, wildfires and floods were a warning, and that the overshoot must be made as small and short as possible. The report warns of irreversible tipping points, including the destabilization of major ice sheets, the degradation of the Amazon rainforest and the weakening of Atlantic ocean currents, and it says some losses will be permanent even if warming is later reversed.
UN Environment Programme