World
Houthi forces in Yemen have taken Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to Yemeni officials and news agencies, days after seizing the Red Sea port city of Mokha. The island divides the southern gateway to a trade route linking Asia and Europe, so control of it raises new risks for commercial shipping. Saudi Arabia ships oil in bulk to Asian buyers on tankers that pass Yemen and the strait, and that traffic is now exposed. The escalation has already helped push oil prices higher. Yemen's civil war began in 2014, when the Houthis seized Sanaa, and a Saudi-led coalition has been bombing the country for more than a decade.
BBC / NYT
Politics
President Donald Trump told CBS News Texas that he does not think Congress would need to approve his plan to send $5,000 to every adult American if Republicans hold the House and Senate. He unveiled the idea during the first Republican midterm convention in Dallas. The payments could cost more than a trillion dollars, and it is not clear what legal authority the president has to send them. Legal experts, economists and some fellow Republicans say the plan faces practical obstacles and long odds in Congress. Party officials in competitive districts have said their candidates will not campaign on the proposal, even as Trump presents it as a way to rescue Republican prospects in November.
CBS News / NBC News
Business
Oil prices moved above $100 a barrel as fighting in the Middle East widened, with Bloomberg reporting crude topping $109 at one point. Global bond yields jumped to multi-year highs and stocks in the United States and Europe slumped on Thursday as investors priced in a longer conflict and faster inflation. The dollar also gained as money moved toward safer assets. Companies continued to spend on AI capacity: Microsoft plans to build data-center capacity to about 38 gigawatts by 2032, more than triple its current footprint. Electric vehicle demand rose for a sixth straight month in August, led by Europe, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
Reuters / Bloomberg / CNN
Technology
Nvidia has confirmed it will buy Hugging Face, the platform that hosts about three million AI models, for $12.93 billion. The deal takes the chipmaker deeper into software and positions it closer to an operating system for artificial intelligence rather than only the hardware underneath it. Nvidia said the platform will remain open source. Hugging Face became the default place where developers publish, compare and download models, so owning it gives Nvidia a view of what teams are building and which architectures are gaining ground. The purchase is one of the largest in the company's history and lands amid a record wave of data-center spending.
Reuters / WIRED
Science
The European and Japanese BepiColombo mission has entered its arrival phase after eight years of travel through the inner solar system. On September 3, mission controllers confirmed that the Mercury Transfer Module separated from the rest of the spacecraft stack, with signals picked up by ESA tracking antennas in Spain and Argentina. The composite spacecraft is set to enter orbit around Mercury on November 21, 2026. Two science orbiters, ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, will separate from each other on December 9 and 10. The science phase is scheduled to start in April 2027, making BepiColombo the first mission to study Mercury from two spacecraft at once. Engineers chose a slow route on purpose: the spacecraft used flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury to shed speed instead of burning fuel, a journey that took about 7.2 years.
ESA / Sci.News
Sports
Ben Shelton beat Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set match at the US Open, one of the biggest wins of his career and a result that changes the shape of the men's draw. Alcaraz, a former champion in New York, had been among the favorites. The win put Shelton into the semifinals along with other American players, in a tournament that lost Jannik Sinner before it began because of a knee injury, and saw Novak Djokovic exit in the first round. Frances Tiafoe also advanced with a five-set comeback. In the women's draw, Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff both lost in the semifinals, leaving no American women in the final. The result also carries ranking value heading into the indoor hard-court season, with year-end standings still in play.
CBS Sports / ABC News
Health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an advisory warning health care providers about a rise in reported human exposure to rabid or possibly rabid animals, along with mistakes in the treatment that follows. Rabies-related inquiries were 17 percent higher in July and August than in the same months of 2025. At least eight state health agencies reported heavier use of post-exposure prophylaxis and procedural errors. Use of rabies vaccines rose about 33 percent and human rabies immune globulin rose 76 percent year over year. The agency pointed to several high-profile outbreaks and mass exposure events, including one in North Carolina where more than 260 people were urged to seek care.
CDC / The Hill
Environment
Four out of five lakes in Turkey have disappeared, according to reporting by BBC Future, as drought and heavy water use drain the country's wetlands. Lakes including Burdur, Egirdir and Beysehir have shrunk or dried out entirely, damaged by over-extraction for industrial agriculture and by illegal wells dug to irrigate fields. About 88 percent of Turkey is at risk of desertification, and the country could face severe drought by 2030. The loss matters beyond Turkey's borders: its wetlands sit on a major migration route between Europe and Africa, and nearly two-thirds of the world's bird species are in decline.
BBC Future / National Geographic