What happened
The flydubai pilot who stabbed the plane’s captain and attempted to hijack a flight to Israel was a “lone wolf” extremist who had already planned the attack before being hired by the airline, according to initial intelligence reports.

Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, 29, who was subdued by crew and passengers, told interrogators that he had intended to crash the plane into a tower in central Tel Aviv, close to Israel’s military headquarters, “in the manner of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack”, said The Times.

Who said what
With three weeks to go before “tight” elections, the incident has become a “key political battleground” in Israel, according to Bloomberg. Benjamin Netanyahu has leaned on his national security credentials in the run-up to the vote, but revelations about flawed Israeli vetting of foreign aircrews could “erode the public’s faith in Netanyahu’s government”.

What next?
Al-Hammami is being held in the UAE, where prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. His co-pilot, Indian national Smit Machchhar, continues to recover in a Dubai hospital.

What happened
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has distanced himself from industry calls for tighter regulation of artificial intelligence, saying people “should accept some bad things” in exchange for the benefits of the technology.

Who said what
Speaking on Politico’s “Decoded” podcast, Altman (pictured above) said “the lighter touch regulatory stance we advocate for comes with an accepting of the fact that some bad things are going to happen”, such as hacks and scams.

Altman’s remarks “sparked an instant backlash from critics”, said The Guardian. AI sceptic Gary Marcus accused him of “saying the quiet part out loud: suck it up, so you can make us rich and powerful”.

Open AI has been the subject of “multiple safety crises over the summer”, said the newspaper. On the weekend a former safety employee at the company, David Robinson, revealed that he had quit due to what he called a “broken” culture.

What next?
OpenAI is facing “the prospect of a barrage of lawsuits” over recent security breaches involving its software, said the Financial Times. However, insiders have “rejected the idea that there would be any meaningful slowdown” in development.

Dementia research has reached a major milestone: Alzheimer’s disease is no longer considered to be untreatable, according to a landmark global report. The growing range of treatment options marks a shift from seeking a cure to focusing on avoiding the disease entirely.

Dementia research has entered an “era of unprecedented activity”, according to the 2026 World Alzheimer Report, co-authored by Alzheimer’s Disease International – a global federation affiliated with the World Health Organization – and health journalist Paul Gallagher.

After years of being considered an “inevitable consequence of old age and neurodegeneration”, Alzheimer’s is now seen as a condition for which “earlier diagnosis, better understanding of disease biology and a wider range of interventions may collectively improve outcomes”.

Hundreds of clinical trials are investigating “medicines, diagnostics, lifestyle interventions, digital technologies, rehabilitation programmes” and new care models for the disease, said the report.

During the past five years alone, novel drugs such as donanemab (brand name Kisunla) and lecanemab (brand name Leqembi) have been shown to “modestly slow decline in early Alzheimer’s”, said Science Alert.

The Alzheimer’s Association is “putting $100 million behind some research projects” to investigate existing medicines that may also be able to help treat the disease, particularly GLP-1s, said Vox. Years from now, when “millions of people are now on these GLP-1 drugs”, we may “start to see Alzheimer’s less often”. This would be “another reason to be optimistic” that the “future for this disease is looking brighter”.