World
Rescuers in Nepal pulled two workers alive from a hydropower tunnel on Friday, nine days after flash floods devastated the region. The men were rescued from the main tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project in Rasuwa district and flown to a hospital in Kathmandu in stable condition. The August 26 flood, believed to have been caused by a glacier collapse, killed more than 1,200 people in Nepal. At least 557 workers are missing from the project, with about 115 believed trapped in the tunnel, according to the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal. Rescuers heard voices before the breakthrough, and army teams continued digging for more survivors.
Al Jazeera
Politics
The Pentagon has put about 50 members of the Joint Staff through polygraph tests as part of an investigation into leaks about the U.S. military campaign against Iran, according to officials familiar with the effort. The tests took place in August after news reports detailed shrinking stocks of long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors. The Joint Staff employs between 1,500 and 2,000 people, making the sweep an unusually wide search. People with knowledge of the effort said the tests were also meant to discourage future leaks. No one has been publicly identified as the source, and officials have not said whether the tests produced an admission. The New York Times first reported the polygraph sweep.
The New York Times
Business
Canada's economy lost 42,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate held at 6.4 percent, Statistics Canada reported Friday. Young workers aged 15 to 24 accounted for 19,000 of the losses as the summer hiring season ended. Economists called the report disappointing but said it was too soon to raise alarms, pointing to trade tension with the United States as a drag on hiring. The student jobless rate averaged 15.9 percent from May to August, two points lower than a year earlier. The figures contrast sharply with the United States, which added 162,000 jobs in August with unemployment at 4.1 percent. Analysts said the weak data cools any talk of interest rate increases by the Bank of Canada.
The Canadian Press
Technology
MapQuest, the 30-year-old mapping service, became the No. 1 navigation app in the United States after refusing to rename Lake Ontario 'Lake America' on its maps. President Donald Trump's executive order, issued amid the U.S.-Canada trade dispute, directed federal records to use the new name. Google Maps said it would comply for U.S. users. MapQuest said it received hundreds of thousands of new downloads, including more than 100,000 in a single day, and app usage climbed to about 50 times normal levels. The app topped Apple's App Store free chart, ahead of ChatGPT, and reached No. 2 overall in Canada. Whether the surge lasts beyond the naming dispute remains an open question for the company.
CNN Business
Science
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have shown that a natural enzyme can accurately read and copy DNA written with an eight-letter alphabet, including four synthetic letters not found in nature. The team studied RNA polymerase from E. coli bacteria, which normally transcribes the four natural letters A, T, C and G. Structural images showed the enzyme recognizes the synthetic base pairs using the same signals it relies on for natural DNA. The findings, published in Nature Communications, advance a long-standing goal in synthetic biology: expanding the language of DNA. Earlier work has used expanded alphabets to build synthetic DNA that can recognize liver cancer cells. Scientists say the approach could lead to new diagnostics, therapies and engineered biological systems.
UC San Diego
Sports
Group play at the 2026 FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup in Berlin reaches its deciding day on Sunday when the United States faces Italy and China meets Czechia in Group D. The Americans opened the tournament with a 94-61 win over China, while Italy beat Czechia 63-54, leaving the United States and Italy at 1-0 and China and Czechia at 0-1. Sunday's results will set the group order and shape the quarterfinal bracket. The 16-team field is the largest since 2018, with 36 games across two Berlin arenas through September 13. The champion earns a direct place in women's basketball at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where the United States already holds a spot as host nation.
FIBA
Health
Older adults who received the Shingrix shingles vaccine were 24 percent less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over four years than those who did not get the shot, a Brown University-led study of more than 500,000 people found. Dementia was diagnosed in 18.8 percent of vaccinated participants versus 24.6 percent of unvaccinated ones, a gap the authors said suggests about one in 17 cases may have been prevented. The study followed adults who entered skilled nursing facilities in the United States. Because it was observational, it cannot prove the vaccine protects the brain. The authors disclosed funding from GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Shingrix, and said the company had no control over the study design or the decision to publish.
Brown University
Environment
The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Army announced a proposed rule on September 4 that would strip federal Clean Water Act protections from most wetlands in the United States. The measure goes further than an initial proposal from November and follows the Supreme Court's 2023 Sackett decision narrowing federal authority over waterways. Environmental groups said millions of acres that filter drinking water and buffer floods would lose protection, and the Environmental Defense Fund warned of higher flood risk. Farmers, ranchers and rural landowners welcomed the plan as a limit on federal intrusion. A 30-day public comment period opens once the rule is published in the Federal Register, and lawsuits are widely expected.
The New York Times