The Rundown — September 29, 2026
THE WORLD · SEPTEMBER 29, 2026
What's going on right now, in one place. The ↗ links out to the original source; the item's own text turns into a link only once it becomes a full entry here.
World
- Russia launches more than 120 drones — about 90 of them jet-powered — at Ukraine on September 28, killing nine people and injuring more than 80 nationwide, including two killed when a drone strikes Kyiv's National Academy of Sciences and destroys several floors of its main administrative building. ↗
- More than 100 Israeli settlers storm the West Bank village of Jalud overnight into September 29, torching homes and vehicles and lightly injuring three Border Police officers, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to condemn the raid while calling the rioters a "handful." ↗
Business & markets
- The Dow closes down 0.7% (347.10 points, to 51,481.10) and the S&P 500 falls 0.8% to 7,683.69 on September 28 as Brent crude's surge past $106 a barrel and climbing Treasury yields weigh on stocks, with the VIX up 8.1% to 16.07. ↗
- Iran's rial falls past 2.5 million to the U.S. dollar on September 29, a new record just 27 days after the previous record of 2.2 million on September 2, with the currency down roughly 25% over the past month as a U.S. naval blockade on Iranian oil and fresh sanctions bite. ↗
Bitcoin & crypto
- Bitcoin opens Tuesday at $83,488, down 1.1% from Monday, then climbs to $83,961 by 7:06 a.m. ET as crypto markets firm up in early trading, with the total crypto market cap holding near $2.94 trillion. ↗
- Ethereum opens flat at $2,687.61 and rises to $2,715.40 over the same stretch, while the Crypto Fear & Greed Index eases slightly to 73, still solidly in "Greed" territory. ↗
Technology
- OpenAI holds back its in-development GPT-6.1 Astra model, with safety-systems head Saachi Jain saying it wasn't good enough at "staying within scope and authorization" and how it reports its own actions back to users. ↗
- The UK's AI Security Institute reports that OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra completed a simulated supply-chain cyberattack in 29.2% of fully simulated trials with its safeguards disabled, versus 6.3% for GPT-5.6 Sol and 0% for GPT-5.5, in results published September 28. ↗
Science
- An international team using South Africa's MeerKAT array detects the first direct radio signal from an exoplanet — auroral bursts from the gas giant Beta Pictoris b, 63 light-years away — yielding a minimum magnetic-field strength of about 1.25 kilogauss, several thousand times Earth's own. ↗
- Astronomers confirm a 10-sided atmospheric wave, dubbed a decagon, encircling Saturn's south pole in Hubble images from August and September 2025 — a counterpart to the planet's 40-year-old northern hexagon that appears to have emerged only in the past few years — publishing the findings in Science Advances. ↗
Health & medicine
- A study of 95,559 UK Biobank participants who wore wrist accelerometers for a week finds more time in REM sleep linked to lower risk of 83 conditions including dementia, heart failure and Parkinson's, while sleeping six to eight hours a night carries the lowest risk across 69 diseases tracked over a median 8.9 years, published September 17 in PLOS Medicine. ↗
- The FDA approves Bexlutry (lutetium Lu 177 dotatate injection), Curium's first radioligand therapy, for adults with somatostatin receptor-positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, announced September 14. ↗