the daily brief

• Zelensky said Russia has launched more than 3,500 drones and nearly 190 missiles against Ukraine so far in September, describing the onslaught as "aerial terror" — rbc-ukraine
• A large Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia killed a 41-year-old man and injured at least 18 more, triggering several fires; a separate night strike destroyed a building in Odesa, wounding children — rbc-ukraine
• Russia's Rostov airfield was engulfed in fire after multiple explosions, and Russian forces struck critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi — rbc-ukraine
• Russian recruiters have been accepting soldiers with HIV, hepatitis and syphilis for the war effort — rbc-ukraine
• Türkiye will host COP31, the UN Climate Change Conference, in Antalya this November, extending the resort city's tourism season into late autumn — hürriyet daily news
• Türkiye's nuclear research agency signed a memorandum of understanding with Denmark's Copenhagen Atomics to develop domestic thorium-based nuclear technology, and separately secured greater access to Russian fertilizer under a new agreement — hürriyet daily news

• Anthropic merged Claude's chat interface and Cowork into one product that automatically routes requests across chat, Artifacts and Claude Design without tab-switching, and added presentation creation with PDF/PowerPoint export and collaborative document editing, rolling out first to Pro and Max plans — aiweekly
• OpenAI began testing sponsored "agents" inside ChatGPT, with Wayfair and Angi as launch advertisers, as part of a push to "reimagine advertising with AI" — aiweekly
• OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra launched at standard API pricing of $10 per million input tokens ($1 cached, $12.50 cache write) and $50 per million output tokens, with a 1.05-million-token context window and 128K output — aiweekly
• Google, Anthropic and OpenAI each unveiled new cyber-focused AI models, safeguards and access programs this week — the hacker news

• The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75%–4%, its first hike since 2023; the FOMC voted 12-0, saying in its statement that "inflation remains elevated" — cnbc
• The Fed's Board of Governors also raised the primary credit rate to 4.0%, effective September 17, and set standing repo and reverse-repo rates at 4.0% and 3.75% — federalreserve.gov
• Türkiye raised its year-end inflation forecast to 28.4% from 16%, blaming the war involving the US, Israel and Iran — hürriyet daily news
• Ninety-seven Turkish startups raised $181 million in the first seven months of 2026, with gaming taking 64% of the funding and 37 AI startups also backed — blog.mean.ceo

• Scientists uncovered a natural immune "braking system" that helps switch off inflammation and prevents harmful immune cells from building up — sciencedaily
• Older adults who changed the balance of fat, carbohydrates and animal protein in their diets showed signs of reduced biological age after just four weeks — sciencedaily
• The Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption may have triggered a surprising chemical reaction that destroyed some of the methane it released into the atmosphere — sciencedaily
• A mathematical shape famous for tiling a surface without ever repeating was found to twist light into unusual chiral patterns — sciencedaily
• Scientists discovered that aging cells can use malfunctioning mitochondria to unlock inflammatory genes, keeping the immune system stuck in a prolonged state of alert — sciencedaily
• Mount Etna's ancient eruptions followed radically different paths — some magma lingered near the surface for weeks, while other magma raced upward from nearly 30 kilometers deep in just hours — sciencedaily

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