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Greetings lovely people,

I’m nursing a particularly violent hangover from Thirsty Thursday, so I’m not really in the small talk mood here.

I’ll leave you in the capable hands of our talented team, whose only purpose in life it is to make the news entertaining as the world slowly descends into an AI-hellscape.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the show!

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

City economists expected the UK economy to shrink by 0.1% in August. Instead, it grew by 0.1%.

Damn it feels good to be back.

"The sector breakdown suggests that AI is behind ​much of the upswing," said Andrew Wishart, senior economist at Berenberg Bank, adding that consumer spending had also surprised to the upside despite rising inflation.

A few more reasons to be cheerful:

There is a caveat to that last one, though.

The rankings are in US dollars, and the yen right now is weaker than a Japanese salaryman after a karaoke night and too much sake.

Japan's economy is still growing, technically, but it just looks a lot smaller in dollars.

The gap is only around £15 billion, so one currency swing and it's back to sixth place, which means we’ll all have to commit seppuku.

This week, the Houthi militia (an Iran-backed group in Yemen who recently seized the Port of Mokha, Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and have control of Yemen’s capital Sanaa) ramped up its assault on Saudi Arabia, who are militarily supporting Yemen’s legitimate government.

On Saturday, the Houthis struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killing an estimate 13 people and wounding over 300. This was soon followed by a second strike on Monday at the same airport which killed another person.

This is far from the only attack the Houthis have successfully launched, financed by the billions they are minting from illicit oil sales and strong-arming ships for port fees, Captain Phillips style.

The Houthis have been firing ballistic missiles and drones (which they have developed by vibe coding with Claude) at airports and oil sites across the country.

As the Houthi attacks escalate in frequency (and success), Turkey and Pakistan have now sent forces to Saudi Arabia, having agreed to activate “deterrence measures” under their Mecca Joint Defence Agreement.

a.k.a The Let’s All Gang Up on Iran (and also fuck Israel whilst we’re at it) Agreement.

In an interesting plot twist, Haaretz is alleging that Israel’s Netanyahu has offered assistance to Crown Prince MBS to help against the Houthis, but his offer has been declined by Riyadh.

Seeing as Bibi could saying Bye Bye pretty soon, it seems like the Saudis have chosen the sensible option.

Which isn’t something you can say all that often.

This week the UK economy grew by a whopping 0.1%.

Depending on what you read, that was A) a triumph of the great British spirit, B) proof that we’re all racist or sexist to some degree or C) [insert Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper clichè here]

Same figure, but very different stories.

That's exactly why we use Ground News.

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Each story shows you:

We use it every week to put this newsletter together. We’d be lost without it (seriously).

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The names Alfozan…Abdulrahman Alfozan.

The aforementioned James Bond wannabe/OpenAI employee, also (incidentally) a Saudi National, was caught planting bugs in executive conference rooms at the company’s San Francisco offices.

His brilliant move was to hide a recording device behind the TVs, then snapping pics to presumably show his handlers.

Here’s a pic of the smooth operator in action.

Alfozan’s motives may not be completely clear (but we can take a pretty good stab at them), but FBI Director Kash Patel alleges that he was trying to ‘secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology’.

Note the use of ‘super intelligence’ not ‘artificial intelligence’. Looks like the term is finally catching on, at least amongst FBI directors with Mossad agent girlfriends.

If he is convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in federal prison.

OpenAI have responded to the incident by issuing a company-wide memo to be on alert for corporate espionage attempts, particularly ‘honey-trap’ plays from foreigner actors.

Given that tech bros tend to have a particular ‘type’, we can only guess what country they are referring to.

In typical Northern fashion, PM Andy Burnham dredged up a decades’ old complaint this week, this time accusing Russia of “clearly” interfering with the 2026 referendum on Brexit.

The remarks are the first time a prime minister has confirmed Kremlin interference in the controversial vote while still in office, as opposed to when safely out of office/on the backbenches/peddling a shit memoir.

However, Andy’s revelations were dimmed days later when MI5 chief Ken McCallum stated publicly that despite Russia’s best attempts to subvert British democracy, their effect on the outcome was still unclear.

It’s been reported that when McCallum’s comments went to the press, Burnham shouted “Let’s see who’s really under there! ” before trying to pull the chief’s face off, allegedly shouting “Pack it in Vlad, we all know it’s you.”

The PM’s anti-corruption posture was also called into question later in week when he met with Manchester City’s owners and directors.

The club have recently been found guilty on overage 100 counts of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, but according to Andy “they didn’t mention it in the meeting”, so we suppose that’s absolutely fine and tickety boo and nothing to see here thank you very much.

Fresh off of calling off the livestream of a public execution, Donald Trump was in a particularly generous mood this week.

After several years of imposing sanctions against Russia following the superpower’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America has declared plans to make an exception.

As the US’ domestic supplies dwindle, Trump reveals Vladimir Putin has agreed to release 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately "to the American and global marketplace", then another 500,000 tonnes in November, and a further one million before April 2027.

The policy change comes in the wake of several months of growing energy costs across the Western world, which in turn were sparked by Iran’s closure and control of the Strait of Hormuz – where an estimated 25% of the planet’s crude oil passes through.

Facing increased scrutiny from Ukraine’s European allies, President Trump responded:

“Hey, don’t blame me; I wouldn’t even need to make this deal if it wasn’t for that stupid war in Iran that just randomly started and that I certainly had nothing to do with”, seemingly while winking and pointing at Marco Rubio and doing a Cuckoo sign with his free hand.

Oil industry representatives have laughed off the idea that importing Russian diesel would bring down prices at the pump.

The United States is the world’s largest diesel exporter, shipping out many times more diesel every day than Russia could supply.

Mark Zuckerberg reminded us of just how completely normal he is this week, as he made a sip of Guinness look about as appetising as being force fed your own regurgitated sick.

For some who feeds his own cows beer, you’d think he could hold back his drink a little better. Then again, the liquid was probably messing with his internal circuitry.

The Zuckster was on the Cheeky Pint podcast with his Head of AI Alex Wang, the youngest self-made billionaire in the world (29), who despite holding that title, still has the haircut of a 35 year old drug addicted Australian DJ.

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Jen & Mike