Top 5 US news stories

FBI Releases Images of Suspect in Charlie Kirk Assassination

Noonan: Kirk Assassination a 'Hinge Point' for America

Investors Bet on Fed Rate Cuts and AI Boom, Driving S&P and Nasdaq to 24th Record This Year

OpenAI's Massive Spending Spree Raises Questions About Its Financial Future

Russia Shuts Down Internet to Counter Ukrainian Drone Attacks

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1. FBI Releases Images of Suspect in Charlie Kirk Assassination

The authorities released video and photo images of a person seen on a nearby roof during the shooting of the activist Charlie Kirk and pleaded with the public for help finding answers. Mr. Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. The video footage from the campus in Orem, Utah, showed a person running across a roof of a nearby building after the shooting, dropping to the ground and walking across a busy street before disappearing into a wooded area. Earlier, the F.B.I. said it had recovered a a high-powered bolt-action rifle from that wooded area. The authorities released images of a man in a stairwell wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and a black shirt adorned with an eagle and an American flag. Officials said they were also analyzing imprints of a forearm, a palm and a shoe from the edge of the building that the person of interest jumped from. Officials believe the person “blended in well” at the scene of the shooting because he appeared to “be of college age.” They said he arrived on campus shortly before noon local time and climbed a stairway up to the roof of a university building. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah urged the public at a news conference on Thursday night to help the authorities capture “this evil human being.” The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, was at the news conference but did not speak, and none of the officials took questions.

NYT

2. Noonan: Kirk Assassination a 'Hinge Point' for America

the assassination of Charlie Kirk feels different as an event, like a hinge point, like something that is going to reverberate in new dark ways. It isn’t just another dreadful thing. It carries the ominous sense that we’re at the beginning of something bad. Michael Smerconish said on CNN Thursday afternoon that normally after such an event the temperature goes down a little, but not in this case, and he’s right. There are the heartbroken and the indifferent and they are irreconcilable. X, formerly Twitter, was from the moment of the shooting overrun with anguish and rage: It’s on now. Bluesky, where supposedly gentler folk fled Elon Musk, was gleefully violent: Too bad, live by the gun, die by the gun. But what a disaster all this is for the young. Kirk was a presence in the life of a whole generation of young conservatives, and he set a kind of template for how to discuss politics—with good cheer and confidence, with sincerity and a marshaling of facts. He was literally willing to meet people where they are. Mainstream media has understandably presented him as a political person, but he was almost as much an evangelical one, a Christian unembarrassed to talk about his faith’s importance to him. All the young who followed him saw the horrifying video of the moment the bullet hit him. They will remember it all their lives, it will be part of their understanding of politics in America. They will ask: If you are killed for speaking the truth as you see it, are you really free? Is this a free country?

WSJ

3. Investors Bet on Fed Rate Cuts and AI Boom, Driving S&P and Nasdaq to 24th Record This Year

All three indexes closed at records for the second time this week. The S&P and Nasdaq have now hit records 24 times this year, and are both up at least 12% year-to-date. Even as labor-market data has suggested an economic slowdown in recent months, investors have instead focused on the prospects of reduced borrowing costs and continued artificial-intelligence mania. “Heads, we get an AI boom,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director of Baird Private Wealth Management. “Tails, we get rate cuts and a borrowing boom.” Thursday’s Labor Department reading showed consumer prices rose 2.9% in the 12 months through August, speeding up from 2.7% in July. Price pressures remain above the Fed’s longstanding 2% target. But traders believe inflation isn’t high enough to dissuade central bankers from trying to protect a weakening labor market. Hiring has slowed significantly this year, though there have been few signs of a corresponding rise in layoffs until Thursday. The number of Americans who filed for initial unemployment benefits jumped last week to 263,000, according to the Labor Department, more than what economists had forecast and the most since October 2021.

WSJ

4. OpenAI's Massive Spending Spree Raises Questions About Its Financial Future

A. OpenAI in the past nine months has committed to spend around $60 billion a year for computing from Oracle, shell out $18 billion on a data-center venture, build a new mass-market AI-hardware device and purchase $10 billion of customized chips. The biggest unknown for the world’s most valuable startup: how it will pay for such outsize ambitions. OpenAI loses billions of dollars a year and has told investors it is on pace to make $13 billion in revenue this year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Less than three years since the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI is tying its fate to a belief that companies and consumers will increase their spending on artificial intelligence at explosive rates for years to come, as the company is now on the hook to pay hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The OpenAI deals that came to light in the past week have added more than $400 billion to the market value of two companies: chip-designer Broadcom and cloud-provider Oracle. They also put Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison in striking distance of becoming the world’s richest person. Oracle’s stock market value jumped over $240 billion Wednesday after the company revealed a giant backlog of computing orders. Most of that is derived from a roughly $300 billion, five-year computing deal with OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal reported. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman himself compared the AI investment boom to the dot-com era at a dinner last month and said that some AI startups and investors will “get burned.” He doesn’t think OpenAI is among them. The startup’s revenue is on track to more than triple this year, and it has told investors it projects hitting $100 billion in sales by 2028 and $200 billion by 2030, according to a person familiar with the figures.

B. OpenAI has said it plans to give its non-profit parent an equity stake worth at least $100bn in the ChatGPT maker, as it announced progress in talks with Microsoft to overhaul its structure and unlock an eventual public listing. The two companies on Thursday said they had signed a “nonbinding memorandum of understanding”, which marks a significant step forward in the start-up’s effort to convert to a more investor-friendly, for-profit structure. Microsoft, an early backer of the artificial intelligence start-up, has for months been locked in contentious negotiations with OpenAI covering the tech group’s access to the start-up’s technology, intellectual property and revenue. An agreement is an essential precursor to OpenAI converting part of its business to a for-profit and clearing a path to an IPO that would hand a huge payday to investors such as SoftBank and the company’s co-founder Sam Altman.

WSJ, FT

5. Russia Shuts Down Internet to Counter Ukrainian Drone Attacks

A sharp increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on targets deep inside Russian territory has prompted the Kremlin to temporarily halt internet services, leading to disruptions for consumers, companies and public services. The local blackouts — which lasted from a few hours to several weeks this summer — have been stepped up in response to Kyiv using mobile-guided drones to hit Russian air bases. The number of mobile data outages hit more than 2,000 in July and August, more than triple the level in June, according to data from Na Svyazi, a Russian technical support project. The outages are adding to challenges for Russia’s war economy, which is showing signs of strain after years of western sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Businesses were already grappling with supply-chain disruptions and record interest rates in the first half of this year. Shutdowns are often in areas around military facilities, where local authorities cut mobile networks in an effort to disrupt drone guidance. In many cases, the outages last from a few hours to several days. The Nizhny Novgorod region, 400km east of Moscow and home to defence plants including the Sverdlov munitions factory and the Korund chemical works, has had whole districts cut off from mobile internet for more than two months at a time. The city was targeted by Ukrainian drones every few months in 2024, but strikes have grown more frequent this year.

FT

September 12 2009: Tea Party protest draws thousands to Washington, D.C.

The September 12, 2009 Taxpayer March represented a pivotal moment in the Tea Party movement, which emerged as a populist conservative reaction to the Obama administration's expansion of federal programs, particularly the Affordable Care Act and economic stimulus spending following the 2008 financial crisis. The Tea Party drew its energy from grassroots anger over perceived government overreach, mounting federal debt, and cultural changes, attracting predominantly white, older Americans who felt disconnected from traditional Republican establishment politics. While initially focused on fiscal conservatism and constitutional originalism, the movement's populist anti-establishment sentiment, its embrace of nationalist themes, and its appeal to voters who felt economically and culturally displaced created a natural pipeline to Donald Trump's MAGA movement beginning in 2015. Trump successfully absorbed much of the Tea Party's base, while maintaining the movement's core anti-elite messaging and outsider appeal. Many Tea Party organizations and leaders either endorsed Trump or saw their supporters migrate to his campaign, as MAGA essentially became the Tea Party's evolved form—retaining its populist energy while broadening its nationalist and culturally conservative focus beyond the original emphasis on taxes and spending.

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Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/12/us/charlie-kirk-news-suspect/heres-the-latest?smid=url-share
2. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/charlie-kirks-assassination-feels-like-a-hinge-point-01dd4f72?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
3. https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/global-stocks-markets-dow-news-09-11-2025-a873f45d
4. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openais-funding-challenges-loom-over-oracle-broadcom-deal-spree-be353399?mod=hp_lead_pos1
5. https://www.ft.com/content/f7891fd7-4e13-4767-8c0c-5b90b6471154
6. https://www.ft.com/content/42b8f467-fc17-4501-aa32-23fd95314a12

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