WORLD IN A DAY · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2026
Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, a months-long war between the US and Iran is now the thing setting fuel prices worldwide, while researchers this week found answers by looking back four thousand years and out toward another star system.
Brent Crude Tops $107 as Iran War Chokes Strait of Hormuz Shipping
Brent crude surged more than 6 percent to $107.63 a barrel on September 10, its highest level in nearly four months, as the US-Iran war, now in its seventh month, brought new strikes on tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. West Texas Intermediate closed above $102 for the first time since May. Traffic through the strait has fallen to roughly 10 commodity ships a day, down sharply from peacetime levels, after the US struck three Iranian tankers and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed hits on three more vessels. US diesel futures broke $5 a gallon for the first time since April 2022, and retail diesel neared $6 a gallon.
Why it matters A war that began as a regional strike campaign is now setting fuel costs worldwide directly, and analysts say markets are pricing in both the escalation and its staying power, not a spike that fades.
Source: Rigzone (Bloomberg), Al Jazeera
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is “Bursting With Methanol,” Study Finds
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array found that interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS contains far more methanol than nearly any comet studied before it, with methanol-to-hydrogen-cyanide ratios of roughly 70 and 120 in observations from late 2025. Lead author Nathan Roth of American University and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory found the methanol came from both the comet’s nucleus and its surrounding ice grains, which released the compound like miniature comets of their own as the object neared the sun. The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and reported September 9. 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object to pass through the solar system, after ‘Oumuamua and Borisov.
Why it matters The comet’s chemistry suggests it formed under conditions unlike anything in our own solar system, giving astronomers a rare direct sample of how planetary building blocks assemble around other stars.
Source: ALMA Observatory, ScienceDaily
Study Solves Part of the Mystery Behind England’s Devil’s Arrows
Geologists led by Anthony Clarke of Curtin University, working with Jim Leary of the University of York, traced the three standing stones known as the Devil’s Arrows, each weighing about 25 tons and up to 23 feet tall, to a quarry at Brimham Rocks 18 kilometers away, far past the closer Plumpton Rocks source long assumed by archaeologists. Using adhesive tape to lift mineral grains from the stones without damaging them, the team matched the samples’ mineral fingerprints to Brimham Rocks and ruled out glacial transport. Neolithic or early Bronze Age builders raised the monument near Boroughbridge in northern England around 2000 BC. The study appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
Why it matters Choosing a harder, farther quarry over a closer one suggests the builders were making a deliberate statement rather than solving a logistics problem, a detail that reshapes how archaeologists read the monument’s purpose.
Source: ScienceDaily, Phys.org
21 States Sue to Block Trump Administration’s Endangered Species Rollbacks
Attorneys general from 21 states, led by Massachusetts’s Andrea Joy Campbell, sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service on September 9 over new rules that narrow the Endangered Species Act. The rules drop habitat destruction from the definition of prohibited harm, end automatic protections for newly listed threatened species, and let agencies exclude federal land from critical-habitat status when officials judge development costs outweigh conservation value. The states argue the changes violate the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and federal environmental review law, and warn they open habitat for the piping plover, short-nose sturgeon, and leatherback sea turtle to logging, mining, and drilling.
Why it matters The suit is a direct test of how far agencies can narrow species protections through rulemaking rather than legislation, with three imperiled species named as the immediate stakes.
Ozempic and Wegovy Linked to Nearly 40% Fewer Asthma Attacks in UK Study
Four studies of UK electronic medical records, each covering 20,000 to 22,000 patients, found that semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, was associated with close to a 40 percent reduction in asthma attacks and roughly 20 percent fewer COPD flare-ups. Chloe Bloom of Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute led the research, presented by Bohee Lee at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Barcelona on September 9. The researchers stressed the findings are observational, not from a randomized trial, and said doctors should not prescribe GLP-1 drugs for asthma or COPD based on this data alone; they called for controlled trials to confirm the effect before it changes treatment guidelines.
Why it matters A drug class built for diabetes and obesity keeps turning up unexpected benefits, but the researchers’ own caution is the real story: real-world data this size still is not a substitute for a trial.
Source: ScienceDaily, Scimex
9/11 Memorial Marks 25th Anniversary With a New Permanent Moment of Silence
Families of the 2,983 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing gathered at the National September 11 Memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan on September 11 to read their names aloud. The ceremony added a seventh moment of silence, honoring people who died of illnesses linked to Ground Zero exposure, alongside the six moments already observed for the towers’ strikes, their collapses, and the Pentagon and Flight 93 attacks; organizers said the seventh moment will remain part of every future ceremony. Disney Entertainment aired “9/11 Tribute in Light: Live From Lower Manhattan” on ABC that evening, and the museum’s new exhibit “In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service” opens September 12.
Why it matters Formally adding a moment of silence for post-9/11 illness deaths extends the recognized toll of the attacks beyond that single day, a change advocates for first responders pushed for over two decades.
Source: National September 11 Memorial & Museum, ABC7 New York
Sources
- Rigzone (Bloomberg), “Oil Soars as Hormuz Risks Rattle Markets”
- Al Jazeera, “Oil prices surge as US-Iran strikes intensify in Strait of Hormuz”
- ALMA Observatory, “ALMA Detects Extremely Abundant Alcohol in Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS”
- ScienceDaily, “Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is bursting with methanol”
- ScienceDaily, “Devil’s Arrows: Ancient builders hauled 55,000-pound stones 11 miles”
- Phys.org, “Prehistoric builders hauled 25-tonne stones at least 18 km to build iconic Devil’s Arrows”
- Stateline, “States sue feds over endangered species rollbacks”
- Forth, “21 State Attorneys General File Lawsuits to Block Trump Administration’s Rollback of Endangered Species Protections”
- ScienceDaily, “Ozempic and Wegovy linked to nearly 40% fewer asthma attacks”
- Scimex, “Ozempic-like drugs may help reduce asthma attacks”
- National September 11 Memorial & Museum, “Marking the 25th Anniversary”
- ABC7 New York, “Remembering 9/11: Live stream of the Sept 11 remembrance ceremony”