It’s a loaded Wednesday. Diplomats are shuttling between Moscow and Kyiv, a handful of US allies just picked a real fight with Israel, markets took a hit overnight, and Apple is about to make its biggest hardware bet in years. Here are the ten stories worth your time today.

1. Witkoff and Kushner call Kyiv talks ‘substantive’ after Moscow meeting with Putin. The two US envoys met with Zelenskyy a day after long conversations with Putin, a sign Washington is still pushing for some kind of endgame in Ukraine.
2. UK, France and Canada move to ban trade with Israeli settlements. A dozen countries are now blocking imports from the West Bank, and Israel has already retaliated by shutting the British consulate in East Jerusalem. This is a genuine rift with close allies, not just a statement.
3. Canada hits back at Trump with tariffs on $20 billion of US goods. The trade fight between the two countries keeps escalating, and it’s the kind of dispute that eventually shows up in prices on both sides of the border.
4. Midterm campaign season officially kicks off. Labor Day marks the unofficial start of election season, and with Trump’s approval numbers weak, control of Congress is genuinely up for grabs this fall.
5. Stocks slide as Middle East tensions push oil higher. The Dow dropped more than 600 points as oil climbed for a sixth straight day, a reminder that geopolitical stress shows up fast in your portfolio.
6. Intel jumps 9 percent on an analyst upgrade and price hike talk. Wall Street likes what it sees in Intel’s turnaround, and reports that the company could raise chip prices due to a supply crunch gave the stock a real lift.
7. Apple holds its ‘Surprise and Shine’ launch event today. Expect a foldable iPhone and new AirPods, and watch who takes the stage, since this is the first Apple event without Tim Cook running the show.
8. The AI race keeps accelerating, from Paris to Beijing. Mistral just raised $3.5 billion to stay in the fight with the big US labs, and China unveiled plans to quadruple its national computing capacity. The competition is getting more global and more expensive by the week.
9. Antarctica quietly gained 695 billion tons of ice, and scientists now know why. A two year snowfall boom traced back to warming in the tropical Pacific temporarily masked the continent’s long term ice loss, a good reminder that climate trends rarely move in a straight line.
10. Hubble finds a mysterious ten sided shape circling Saturn’s south pole. It’s basically a southern cousin to Saturn’s famous northern hexagon, only bigger and less stable, and nobody fully knows yet why gas giants build these geometric weather patterns.

That’s the day. See you tomorrow.