Tuesday 22 September: Iran at the UN and drones over Moscow

World news (past 24 hours)

United States turns the screw on Iran's airlines. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said all Iranian airlines will be shut out worldwide from Wednesday 23 September. Airports and firms that still service Iranian planes risk losing access to the US dollar system. A spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guard answered that there will be "significant changes" in Iran's defence and counter-attack if the US strikes again. It lands on the day world leaders gather in New York, where Trump has signalled he is willing to meet Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. (Al Jazeera, Khaleej Times)

Russia promises to hit back after the biggest drone night of the war. Ukraine sent its largest drone barrage yet at Moscow over the weekend. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences shot down 450 drones near the capital; Russia's defence ministry claimed 1,110 across Russia, Crimea and the Black Sea, while some reports put the total above 1,600 since Saturday. Drones hit the Moscow Refinery, one of Russia's largest, and a residential building; two people died and about twenty were hurt, three of them children. On Monday Russian drones struck a city in southern Ukraine and Moscow vowed to step up strikes on Kyiv. (Irish Times, Al Jazeera, CP24)

Typhoon Dujuan batters Japan. The storm passed south of Tokyo on Monday with winds near 144 kilometres per hour, bringing floods and landslides. Two people died and four are missing, and more than 1.6 million people were told to leave their homes. Japan Airlines scrapped 135 flights and All Nippon Airways 140, and bullet trains between Tokyo and Osaka were halted. By early Tuesday the storm had moved out to sea and was heading north-east. (Al Jazeera, Japan Times)

Politics

Trump's approval rating falls to 32 percent. That is the lowest of his career, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll held from 17 to 20 September among 1,277 people, with a margin of error of three points. Support among Republicans dropped to 73 percent from 82 percent a week earlier. Only 17 percent back his handling of the cost of living, the issue voters name most often. He began his second term at 47 percent in the same poll. (Al Jazeera)

UN investigator calls US boat strikes possible crimes against humanity. A special rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council said there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that a year of American attacks on boats said to carry drugs amount to serial extrajudicial killings. More than 230 people have been killed in at least 69 strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September 2025. The Trump administration rejects that, calling the networks foreign terrorist organisations and the strikes lawful self-defence. (UPI)

Economy

Oil keeps sliding and shares rise. Brent traded near 102 dollars a barrel and the American grade slipped below 100 dollars, a fourth day of falls. Saudi Arabia expects to restore about half the capacity of its East-West pipeline within days and its exports have recovered from the August lows. Cheaper oil lifted share markets, with the Nasdaq leading the gains on Monday. Traders also point to hopes of talks on the edges of the UN meeting. (Yahoo Finance, Rio Times)

Paramount settles and clears the way for the Warner Bros. deal. Twelve American state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, dropped their competition case against Paramount Skydance on Monday. Paramount promised at least 1.5 billion dollars extra for film production in the United States over five years, a fund of 47.5 million dollars for workers hit by the merger, and a 45 day run in cinemas before wide releases can stream. The settlement removes the last big hurdle for the roughly 111 billion dollar takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. (CNBC, Variety, NPR)

Dutch news (past 24 hours)

Police investigate racism and violence at the Malieveld protest. The Hague police said on Monday they are looking into possible discrimination and assault during Saturday's demonstration by the far-right group Wij Zijn Het Volk. Twenty-four people were arrested at the time after fireworks were thrown at riot police and antisemitic slogans and gestures were used. The public prosecutor has asked detectives to gather video and witness statements, including on violence against journalists. (NOS, Politie.nl)

Dutch father gets 23 years over his son's death in Belgium. A court in Antwerp convicted the man of murdering his 14 year old son Jairon, from Tilburg. The jury found he refused to get medical help while the boy lay severely ill with covid at the end of 2021; the boy died in early January 2022 in the father's villa in Turnhout and his body was found only eight weeks later. The court said the father put his child's life below his strict religious beliefs. Four other adults got suspended sentences of one to three years. (NOS, nu.CW)

Break-ins at fire stations are climbing fast. There have been 85 break-ins at Dutch fire stations so far this year, against 18 in the whole of 2025 and 17 in 2024. Thieves target expensive hydraulic rescue gear, the spreaders meant to cut people out of wrecked cars. Police say the stolen tools turn up across Europe, used to force roller shutters and cash machines. (NOS, Reformatorisch Dagblad)

Politics

Row over the International Criminal Court flares up before the UN meeting. Washington is threatening fresh sanctions that could bring the court in The Hague to a standstill, in anger over the arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and an inquiry into American soldiers in Afghanistan. Prime minister Rob Jetten and foreign minister Berendsen are in New York this week. Coalition party D66 says the West cannot accept this and wants the government to stand squarely behind the court, which the Netherlands hosts. (NOS Nieuwsuur)

Watchdog warns over unchecked AI at the intelligence services. The CTIVD, which oversees the AIVD and MIVD, says the services are building and using artificial intelligence faster than they are writing rules for it. They use AI to sort and analyse data and to write summaries, but there was no central overview or AI policy during the inquiry. That leaves too much resting on individual staff, and wrongly used systems can give unreliable results. (NOS, Reformatorisch Dagblad)

Low earners pay more under the new childcare system. An analysis of the draft law shows that parents on low incomes will pay more for childcare than they do now, while middle and higher incomes pay less than the original plans foresaw. Low earners already get most of their costs reimbursed, so they gain little from a higher reimbursement rate. From 2027 the government pays childcare providers directly and parents contribute 4 percent of the hourly rate; experts fear providers will then push their rates further above the maximum. (NOS)

Economy

Dutch consumers stay gloomy. Consumer confidence stood at minus 39 in September, barely better than minus 40 in August, the statistics office CBS reported this morning. The twenty year average is minus 10. People were more pessimistic about the economy over the next twelve months, at minus 39 against minus 36, but more willing to make big purchases, at minus 49 against minus 54. (CBS)

The Dutch AI supercomputer gets an address in Groningen. Research body SURF has picked Eurofiber's data centre on the Zernike campus in Groningen for the country's first large scale AI facility. The project is worth around 200 million euro from European, national and regional funds; the machine should be delivered during 2027 and running early in 2028. Waste heat will warm about 2,000 homes and the cooling uses no water. The aim is to make the Netherlands less dependent on American and Chinese computing power. (NOS, Computable)

Google fined 403 million euro over location data. The Irish data protection authority, which supervises Google for the whole European Union, says the company was not clear enough about how location data from Maps, Search and Android was used for personalised adverts, and kept it longer than needed. The investigation covered May 2018 to February 2020 and followed complaints from European consumer groups. Google says the case concerns old policies that were changed in 2019, and it has six months to comply. (NOS, Bright)

AI news (past 24 hours)

OpenAI sets up a maths advisory group. The company announced an independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. It follows the abrupt publication of a claimed solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem and OpenAI's statement that its systems have now settled more than a hundred open problems. The group is meant to give mathematicians a say in how the company runs and publishes that work. (TechCrunch)

Meta's Muse app is outrunning ChatGPT's launch. Meta's personal AI assistant took 1.8 million iOS downloads in the United States and Canada in its first twelve days, against 1.3 million for ChatGPT over the same stretch of its own mobile launch. Muse is at about 2.8 million installs worldwide and reached number one among free iPhone apps in the United States on Friday. The comparison is not exact, because ChatGPT went out globally on iOS only in 2023. (TechCrunch, CNBC)

British Columbia sues OpenAI over a school shooting. The Canadian province filed a case in federal court in San Francisco on Monday against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman. It says the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, which killed nine people, most of them children, might have been prevented had the company told police that the shooter used ChatGPT to plan it. The province wants damages for emergency response and recovery, plus a court order forcing OpenAI to change how it handles conversations that threaten violence. (Al Jazeera, CBC)

Twenty countries want a global AI watchdog. A statement led by Norway and Finland, and signed by twenty countries including Germany and Canada plus the European Commission, calls for safety testing before release, common standards and an international body that can step in when AI systems cross capability thresholds. It asks the United Nations to look at setting up such an institution. The United States, the United Kingdom and China did not sign. (NBC News, Washington Examiner)

Also

Sport. China is running away with the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. After day two it had 23 gold medals and 38 in total, ahead of hosts Japan on 8 gold, South Korea on 5 and Kazakhstan on 4. India sits twelfth with six medals and took its first ever Asian Games medal in mixed martial arts, which is new to the programme, through Suchika Tariyal's bronze. (Olympics.com)

Nature. Today is the last full day of astronomical summer in the Netherlands. The September equinox falls at five past midnight UTC on Wednesday, which is five past two in the morning Dutch time. It is also the peak of autumn bird migration, and the birds crossing overhead at night steer by the sun, the stars and the Earth's magnetic field. (EarthSky)

On this day. Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791. He had almost no schooling and started out binding books, yet he worked out how to make electricity from a magnet and built the first electric motor and dynamo. Nearly every power station running today still uses his idea. (Britannica)

Weather in Groningen. A grey, mild day. The temperature climbs to about 18 degrees, with a low near 11. It stays dry apart from a small chance of a shower around 11 in the morning, and the wind is light from the south-west. (Met Office, Ventusky)

On the agenda today

The general debate of the UN General Assembly opens at 9 in the morning New York time, which is 3 in the afternoon here. Secretary-General António Guterres gives his last opening speech before his term ends, then Brazil's president Lula speaks, and Trump follows about fifteen minutes later. King Abdullah II of Jordan, Turkish president Erdogan, the Emir of Qatar and French president Macron are also down to speak on Tuesday, and Trump is due to meet Gulf Arab leaders about the next phase of the Iran war. The American shutdown of Iranian airlines is set to take effect worldwide tomorrow. In The Hague the question hour in the Tweede Kamer starts at 2 in the afternoon. Morocco votes in parliamentary elections tomorrow. (CNN, Al Jazeera, Tweede Kamer)