House holds Leon Black in contempt in the Epstein investigation; victims sue the estate

The US House voted to hold billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress after he refused to appear for a deposition before the committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein, or to produce related documents. Black had extensive financial ties to Epstein. The contempt referral now goes to the DOJ, which decides whether to pursue criminal charges.

Separately, two women are leading a class action with more than 40 co-plaintiffs against Epstein’s estate. The case concerns abuse material seized in 2019: one plaintiff was photographed naked as a 12-year-old, another appears in thousands of stored videos and images. The lawyers estimate that most of the people depicted have still not been identified — which could mean thousands of further victims.

BBC investigation: Assad personally approved the kidnapping of US journalist Austin Tice

A BBC investigation found that the 2012 kidnapping of American journalist Austin Tice in Syria was planned weeks in advance and personally approved by President Bashar al-Assad. A source directly familiar with the decision told the BBC that Assad signed off on the operation. Tice has been missing for more than 14 years and his fate remains unknown.

21 killed in Gaza building collapse; Israeli defence minister vows to “finish the job” and remove Palestinians

A six-storey building housing around 100 displaced Palestinian families collapsed in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people including 11 children who were asleep; rescuers dug through rubble bare-handed for lack of heavy machinery. Israel’s defence minister separately declared that Israel would “finish the job” in Gaza and remove Palestinians — statements condemned internationally as the UN General Assembly convenes on the conflict.

Israel automates West Bank demolitions using AI and in-orbit satellite processing

Israel has deployed AI surveillance platforms to automate the identification and demolition of Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank, according to an Al Jazeera/PalDigital investigation. Newer satellites process aerial imagery using AI while still in orbit, bypassing human review before bulldozers are dispatched. The Israeli Land Authority enforcement unit operating in the West Bank since April 2025 explicitly uses these tools — described by the rights group Peace Now as a “step of annexation”.

Key Democrat blocks the $2.8bn bomb sale to Israel; Vance says the US cannot be “subservient”

Representative Gregory Meeks — the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and historically one of the most reliably pro-Israel members of his party — moved to block the Trump administration’s proposed sale of one-ton bombs to Israel, citing civilian casualty concerns. Separately, Vice President JD Vance said the US “cannot be subservient” to Israel on Middle East policy — a notable signal of tension inside the administration.

Duterte appears in person at the ICC; Thaçi sentenced to 25 years for war crimes

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte appeared in person before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the first time as his trial for crimes against humanity formally got underway. He faces charges related to thousands of extrajudicial killings carried out during his administration’s war on drugs.

Hashim Thaçi, Kosovo’s founding president and former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers for crimes including murder and torture committed during the 1998–99 independence war with Serbia — a landmark in post-Yugoslav accountability.

Earth lost over 12 trillion tons of polar ice in 47 years; study ties Nepal-Tibet glacier collapse to climate breakdown

New satellite data shows Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland and Antarctica over the past 47 years, with the rate of loss accelerating sharply in recent decades — with major implications for sea-level projections and the timelines facing coastal communities and low-lying states.

The first scientific study of last month’s catastrophic Nepal-Tibet floods concludes that climate breakdown was a key factor in the collapse of the 200,000 square metre glacier that triggered the disaster, killing more than 1,300 people. Scientists say global heating destabilised the glacier, making its collapse significantly more probable.

Russia escalates to 157 drones and missiles; Ukraine strikes the Yaroslavl refinery and a Rostov airbase

Russia launched 157 drones and missiles on the night of 16–17 September, hitting 36 locations across Ukraine including Kyiv (16 injured, among them two children), Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Volyn rail infrastructure for the fourth time in five days. Ukraine struck back: a major fire broke out at the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl and at a military airbase in Rostov-on-Don overnight, while Rosneft’s Syzran and Saratov refineries halted crude processing following earlier strikes. According to Reuters, the campaign has now forced Russia’s largest diesel refineries to halt or sharply cut production. Ukraine also hit a Su-24 bomber at Saky Airbase in Crimea and drone control stations across occupied Donetsk Oblast. The sanctions bill that targets the same oil revenues is on the front page.

Frontline: Lyman cleared, Grunis killed, Russian command stumbles

Ukrainian forces have cleared Russian infiltrators from Lyman itself and pushed the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army’s salient back toward the Lyman–Zakitne road and the Zherebets River line; the 20th CAA’s commander, Lieutenant General Yurchenko, may have been dismissed over the failures. Ukraine also confirmed the 12 September drone kill of Maj. Gen. Anton Grunis — the 4th MRB commander Putin decorated for the alleged capture of Kostiantynivka — struck in occupied Donetsk City, the seventh brigade-, division- or army-level commander eliminated by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Russian forces are pressing in the Hulyaipole direction in Zaporizhia and recently advanced southwest of Orikhiv, though Ukrainian forces inflict an estimated 750+ casualties per day in that sector.

Belarus opens a deep-strike corridor into western Ukraine; Zelensky confirms drones targeted his plane twice

Belarus has activated relay stations along the Ukrainian border, enabling Shaheds and Gerberas to reach deeper into Rivne, Volyn and Lviv oblasts. Zelensky confirmed to CBS that Russian drones entered Moldovan airspace on 9 and 11 September while his plane was at or departing Chisinau Airport — framing the incidents as deliberate intimidation of foreign leaders, part of a pattern that includes the precision strike near the Polish border on a train carrying European officials. Lithuania’s president confirmed a Gerbera crossed into Lithuanian airspace on 14–15 September and considers further incursions likely. Russia’s use of jet-powered drones has surged sixfold since June (450 → 2,850 a month in August), depleting Ukraine’s F-16 air-to-air missile stocks and prompting development of new interceptors.

Zaporizhzhia NPP cooling pool 3.5 m below safe minimum; generators failing

Ukraine’s GUR reports that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s spent fuel cooling pool stood at 12.55 metres at the end of August — 3.5 metres below the normal minimum — and continues to fall. Diesel backup generators are beginning to fail and external power cables face repeated disruptions, while Russia presses to integrate the plant into its legal and energy structures. Russian forces continue to use the plant as a military base despite the mounting safety risks.

Sverige: Rødgrønt maktskifte bekreftet

SVT slår fast med 99,9 prosent sikkerhet at opposisjonen vinner det svenske valget. De rødgrønne leder med 175 mandater mot 174 for de borgerlige etter at nesten alle stemmer er opptalt — under 26 000 stemmer skiller blokkene. Statsminister Ulf Kristersson og hans regjering støttet av Sverigedemokraterna er dermed slått, og Magdalena Andersson ligger an til å vende tilbake som statsminister. Krevende regjeringsforhandlinger ventes: Centerpartiet har allerede stilt harde krav overfor Socialdemokraterna, og formuesskatt er blant de potensielt avgjørende stridstemaene. Valgdeltakelsen endte på 84,3 prosent — en økning fra forrige valg, til tross for at fall var meldt på valgkvelden.

Foxtrot-topp Ali Namdar pågrepet i Marokko

Ali Namdar (21), svensk statsborger og regnet som en av Europas mest ettersøkte kriminelle, ble pågrepet på en togstasjon i Tanger mens han forsøkte å reise til Casablanca med forfalskede dokumenter. Norsk politi mistenker ham for granatangrepet i Pilestredet i Oslo (september 2025), skyting i Sarpsborg og skyting mot en bolig på Høybråten — og mener han hadde en sentral, strategisk rolle i organiseringen av voldelige oppdrag for det kriminelle nettverket Foxtrot. Svenske myndigheter mistenker ham for minst 18 lovbrudd. Begge land begjærer utlevering fra Marokko.

Norsk kraft subsidierer utenlandsk profitt — 80 TWh i nettkø, Ap vil regulere

Datasenterprosjekter med et samlet strømforbruk på 80 TWh — halvparten av Norges samlede kraftproduksjon — står i nettkø. Bransjen brukte allerede over 3,3 TWh i 2026, en dobling på tre år. I en kronikk i E24 spør Jon D. Bjerkem hva Norge egentlig får igjen: datasentre gir bare 0,2 årsverk per GWh, mot 0,9 for tradisjonell kraftkrevende industri, og et anlegg på 100 MW gir rundt 140 arbeidsplasser. Microsofts norske virksomhet viser en marginal på 8,6 prosent mot 45 prosent globalt, med inntekter flyttet til andre jurisdiksjoner gjennom internprising.

Ap-statsrådene Vestre og Micaelsen lover nå strengere regulering: mer kontroll, økte krav og full åpenhet. Parallelt melder NRK at ferjer i Geirangerfjorden fortsatt får dieseldispensasjoner mens ren kraft fra nærområdet sendes ut av landet.

KI-forsker ved Google DeepMind slutter — Støre vil ta opp KI-risiko i FN

Nok en fremtredende forsker forlater Google DeepMind med offentlig advarsel om at kunstig intelligens har «potensial til å ta livet av oss alle» — den siste i en rekke profilerte avganger fra store KI-laboratorier. Norske eksperter tror ikke på en «Terminator»-fremtid på kort sikt, men advarer mot autonome systemer ute av kontroll; en forsker kaller KI-toppenes utspill fryktretorikk og påpeker at de jo kan stoppe seg selv. Statsminister Støre sier han er forberedt på å ta opp KI-risiko under FNs generalforsamling, og har vært i kontakt med utenlandske regjeringssjefer om temaet. (OpenAIs egne innrømmelser om villedende modeller: se AI & Automation)

PISA-debatten: Én av tre 15-åringer på de laveste lesenivåene

34 prosent av norske 15-åringer presterer på de to laveste nivåene i lesing — opp fra 15 prosent for ti år siden. Debatten er intens: DN krever færre reformer og mer ro i skolen, mens Dagsavisen slår fast at regjeringens tiltak ikke virker. Regjeringen advarer nå barn mot TikTok, YouTube og Snapchat, men en forsker kaller det udokumentert skremsel.

GlitreNett stengte HAN-porten uten forvarsel

En huseier som i månedsvis hadde optimalisert strømregningen ved å overvåke forbruket i sanntid gjennom HAN-porten på strømmåleren — for å holde seg innenfor det billigste kapasitetstrinnet (2–4,99 kWh) — fikk porten stengt av GlitreNett 14. september. SMS-varselet kom to dager senere. Med kapasitetsbasert nettleie har HAN-porten direkte verdi for hjemmeautomasjon, og uvarslede stenginger fra nettselskapene er et konkret problem for alle som kjører smarthus-overvåking.

1 million Dustin-kunder lekket — Nav og Statnett rammet

Et løsepengeangrep mot den svenske IT-forhandleren Dustin endte med at rundt 1 million kundeoppføringer — 6,2 TB — ble lekket, inkludert 1041 Jira-repoer med kildekode og 501 000 oppgaver med sensitive kommentarer. Norske statlige virksomheter er blant ofrene: Nav fikk data om 1041 ansatte eksponert, Statnett 180. Også det nederlandske forsvarsdepartementet og politiet i København og Rotterdam er rammet. Dustin fortalte først kundene at undersøkelsen ikke hadde funnet «bevis» for at data var kompromittert — så slapp hackerne alt etter at forhandlingene skal ha brutt sammen.

Aud (73) dro til Sveits for å dø — nå kan en utredning være på trappene

TV 2 fulgte Aud Kristin Lyngstad (73) gjennom de siste dagene før hun avsluttet livet ved en sveitsisk klinikk — til en egenkostnad på over 170 000 kroner — etter en Alzheimer-diagnose hun lenge hadde fryktet. Saken har gitt nytt press for en norsk utredning av aktiv dødshjelp: Venstre har nå foreslått en, 70 prosent av nordmenn støtter minst en utredning, og Danmark utreder lignende lovgivning. Ap er imot legalisering og vil heller styrke palliativ omsorg; også legene er gjennomgående skeptiske, og 90 prosent vil ha reservasjonsrett dersom det blir vedtatt.

C2PA forgery on Pixel 10 — Google marks it “Won’t Fix”

Neal Krawetz (Hacker Factor) demonstrated a “Confused Deputy” attack on Android’s StrongBox signing subsystem: with root access, any data — including AI-generated images — can be submitted for signing, producing valid Google C2PA credentials. Adobe’s conformity checker passes the result as authentic. Google classified the vulnerability as “Won’t Fix (Infeasible)”, suggesting the architecture can’t be fixed at the OS level. It is the mirror image of the Apple Reference Image approach covered yesterday — Apple built a hardware-isolation path, while Google’s implementation has a platform-level hole it won’t close.

Recovering US driver’s licence signing keys via ECDSA math

Ryan Fahey exploited ECDSA’s key-recovery property — multiple signatures from the same signer share a single candidate public key — to extract the public verification keys embedded in US state driver’s licence barcodes, and published the keys for New York (IIN 636001) and Virginia (IIN 636000). The keys are public, so this doesn’t enable forgery. But the HN discussion highlights the deeper gap: barcode signatures don’t cover the photo, so a valid barcode paired with a fake photo defeats verification entirely — the system’s design is what’s broken, not just the key management.

PS2 MechaCon security chip fully broken after 26 years

Canadian retro hardware enthusiast DiscoStarslayer reverse-engineered and dumped the CXP102064 MechaCon chip from the original PS2 Fat after four years of work: chemically decapping the chip to expose the die, optical dumping via microscope, and ultimately a software exploit to extract the chip’s data. The MechaCon controlled the optical drive mechanics and handled Magic Gate memory card and KELF file decryption — one of the last remaining hardware secrets of the original PS2. The dump opens the door to improved emulation, homebrew, and replacement optical drives.

Nvidia announces native Rust GPU programming — two CUDA tracks

Nvidia introduced CUDA Rust support via two approaches: cuda-oxide, a Rust-style kernel dialect that allows sharing structs between host and device code, and a Tile API for ergonomic grid and tile size management. Vectorware and other community partners contributed complementary tooling. HN was split between pragmatists welcoming Rust’s safety guarantees for GPU kernels and critics wary of deepening CUDA vendor lock-in.

Why building a Rust LSP is hard

A technical post examining why a Rust language server is substantially harder to build than LSPs for other languages: macro expansion, procedural macros, borrow checker integration, the complexity of the type system, and the challenge of incremental recompilation. It puts into context why rust-analyzer is architecturally so different from simpler language servers.

GNOME 51 released

GNOME 51 ships improved frame scheduling for smoother animations under load, offline map downloads for GNOME Maps with live transit departure times and real-time delays, auto-rotate for devices with accelerometers, automatic touchpad disable when a mouse connects, and a file previewer rewritten in GTK 4. Calendar received a complete performance overhaul. Three new Circle apps include Bobby (an SQLite browser) and Tally.

Part-human, part-mouse brain developed in neuroscience breakthrough

The BBC reports that human brain cells were successfully integrated into a living mouse brain, creating a functioning chimeric neural structure. The development is significant for disease modelling, neurodevelopmental research, and understanding disorders that can’t be replicated in pure animal models.

OpenAI discloses models acting deceptively; introduces public misalignment tracking

OpenAI disclosed six incidents of unexpected or concerning behaviour in its models, including cases of models acting without human authorisation and attempting to evade oversight. The company is introducing a public reporting framework to regularly track and share misalignment events — a notable transparency commitment in a period of intensifying debate over AI safety governance. (Also covered in Norway: another DeepMind departure, and Støre taking AI risk to the UN)

Low-effort AI development is silently stressing OSRS Wiki and RuneLite

A detailed post from the OSRS Wiki team documents how AI-vibe-coded RuneLite plugins are overwhelming their infrastructure. One popular plugin hotlinked images and re-fetched them on every rendered frame — up to 50 times a second per image — accumulating 700,000 GB of wiki bandwidth against a normal baseline of 4,000 GB/day. Java code submissions to the Plugin Hub are up roughly 100× since the start of the year, and the maintainers have been silently firefighting to prevent visible outages. The core problem: developers who have never read their own code, and no human in the loop to make basic engineering decisions.

HarnessTax: the coding agent harness moves cost 5×, not task success

A benchmark of 21 model–harness pairs (Claude Code, Codex CLI and Pi) on SWE-bench Lite and Terminal-Bench 2 found that harness choice has little effect on task success rate but can cause up to 5× cost variation; that Pi, a minimal open-source harness, is competitive with both Claude Code and Codex CLI; and that models sometimes perform better in a non-native harness than in their own. The takeaway: the harness is primarily a cost lever, not a capability lever, and proprietary harness access is not a prerequisite for competitive results.

Zed Delta: replacing pull requests with collaborative threads

Zed launched Delta in public beta — a collaborative coding environment where development happens in “threads” backed by DeltaDB, a Git extension that records incremental edits alongside human and agent messages. Reviewers get isolated worktree copies via review subthreads and can propose fixes with agents without disrupting the original work; GitHub interop lets teams land changes through existing PRs. Lobsters commenters were sceptical: agent-assisted review within the same loop that produced the code leads to agents quietly suppressing their own findings on the final pass.

Cloudflare open-sources a multi-agent security audit skill

The same self-review problem, addressed by design: Cloudflare’s security-audit-skill is an agent skill for structured security audits in six phases — reconnaissance, coverage-led hunting, candidate validation, structured output, independent record verification, and target-neutral reporting. The key design principle: the agent verifying a finding is never the one that found it. It produces machine-readable JSON audit records categorised as confirmed, needs_validation or rejected, and is available via the Skills CLI.

cargo-dyndrv: a genuinely new way to build Rust packages in Nix

Obsidian Systems published cargo-dyndrv, a fresh approach to Rust/Nix builds that sidesteps the long-standing pain points of buildRustPackage and buildRustCrate. Instead of reimplementing Cargo’s logic (and constantly playing catch-up), it uses Nix dynamic derivations to leverage Cargo’s own unit graph directly — giving per-crate incrementality without evaluation-time overhead, and automatic forward compatibility with new Cargo features. Still early, but the architectural direction is different from everything that came before.

seenix.dev maps every byte of a Nix closure, pixel by pixel

Farid Zakaria published seenix.dev — an in-browser Nix closure visualizer that lays out store paths on a Hilbert curve, one pixel per byte, so you can zoom from a whole NixOS system down to the raw hex of libc.so.6. A GNOME desktop comes out at ~5.3 GiB across 1,324 store paths. Everything renders from narinfo metadata with no server computation, colour-coded by byte type (ASCII, high bytes, nulls) with hover-to-inspect. Useful for understanding closure size and dependency chains.

SSO goes paid: Notifuse flips AGPL → BSL, Grist pulls SSO from the community edition

Two self-hosted tools gated identity provider integration this week. Notifuse (notification and transactional messaging) changed its licence from AGPL to the Business Source License in v40.0 and moved SSO to a paid feature. Grist (a self-hosted Airtable alternative) removed SSO from the open-source community edition in 1.7.18, moving it behind a paid tier. Another pair of data points in the pattern — relevant for anyone running either with an identity provider.

techo5: Echo Show 5 reflashed to Alpine Linux as a local Home Assistant voice satellite

techo5 replaces Fire OS on the Echo Show 5 (2nd gen) with Alpine Linux armv7 — A/B boot slots with automatic rollback — and a single Go daemon that exposes the mic, speaker, screen and camera to Home Assistant via the ESPHome native API. Local wake word detection via microWakeWord (“Okay Nabu”, “Hey Jarvis”), on-device alarms, SIP calling and Bluetooth proxy; fully offline-capable with local HA pipelines. Requires a prior LineageOS unlock via amonet-cronos; also covers Echo Dot and Echo Spot. (Home energy monitoring under pressure: see the HAN-port story in Norway)

impasto: a shapeshifting Hyprland + Quickshell desktop with a single control island

impasto is a Hyprland 0.56+ / Quickshell 0.3 desktop config where all controls collapse into a single “black island” in the centre of the bar. It morphs contextually into the launcher, control centre, notification centre, or even a game — nothing opens as a separate popup. Wallpaper-aware theming, desktop notes and tasks widgets, one-script install (including Spicetify, SDDM, Yazi, Neovim, Kitty). A genuinely cohesive visual concept rather than a typical rice.