A pound of ground roast coffee averaged $9.317 in July 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just below the record $9.723 set in April. The high prices frame this week’s National Coffee Day on September 29 and the first UN-observed International Day of Coffee on October 1. Key
U.S. employers had 7.1 million job openings at the end of August 2026, down 256,000 from July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on September 29. The openings rate slipped to 4.3%. Hiring, quits, and layoffs held roughly steady, so labor demand is cooling without a rise in job losses.
The nor’easter that hit the Northeast from September 25 to 28, 2026, wiped out one of the fall’s busiest live music weekends. Organizers canceled the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park, the three-day All Things Go NYC festival in Queens, and both of Ed Sheeran’s concerts at Gillette Stadium, shutting
The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has reached late September without producing a single hurricane, the first time that has happened since 1914. Six named storms have formed, but none reached hurricane strength. Forecasters point to a strengthening El Niño that NOAA expects to rival or surpass the strongest on record
Diesel fuel prices in the United States have surpassed their all-time high, reaching a national average of more than $6.51 per gallon according to AAA, as American farmers enter the fall harvest season with no viable alternative to the fuel that powers their combines, tractors, and transport trucks. The previous
DreamWorks Animation’s “Forgotten Island” lifted its review embargo on September 21 to a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, positioning the studio’s 50th animated feature film and first major Hollywood production built around Filipino mythology for a wide theatrical release on September 25 backed by the kind of critical consensus that rarely
Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour lost every one of its opening acts in a 24-hour span this week after Macklemore was removed from the U.S. leg for making pro-Palestinian comments during two MetLife Stadium shows. Finneas, Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe, Irish band Beoga, and Danish pop group Lukas Graham all withdrew
The U.S. Department of Education has published nonpayment-rate data identifying 500 colleges and universities where at least 40% of recent federal student loan borrowers are not making payments. The data, drawn from a late-May 2026 federal analysis of roughly 17 million borrowers who entered repayment between January 2020 and May
The Environmental Protection Agency formally rescinded carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants on Monday, September 14, 2026, eliminating mandates that required existing coal-fired plants and new gas-fired plants to deploy carbon capture or equivalent emission-reduction technologies. The rollback, announced on the sidelines of the G20 energy ministers’ meeting
The 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks will be commemorated on September 11, 2026, across the United States, with the annual name-reading ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan serving as the national focal point. Family members will read the names of the 2,983 men, women,
The 2026 NFL regular season opens Wednesday, September 9, with the defending Super Bowl LX champion Seattle Seahawks hosting the New England Patriots at Lumen Field in a nationally televised Super Bowl rematch on NBC and Peacock. Less than 24 hours later, the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams
American employers announced 52,881 planned layoffs in August 2026, a 38% decline from the same month a year ago and the lowest August total since 2022, according to the monthly report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas released on September 3. The report marks a notable shift in what is driving
An executive order published in the Federal Register on Monday, August 31, declares a national emergency over foreign-produced equipment operating within the United States bulk-power system, the network of high-voltage transmission lines, substations, transformers, and generation infrastructure that delivers electricity across the country. Executive Order 14421, signed August 26 under
A study published August 25, 2026, in The BMJ by researchers at Harvard University and Boston University found that at least one in four former NFL players who died over a recent five-year span had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head impacts. The research, conducted
Target removed a children’s Halloween costume from stores and its website on August 25, 2026, after widespread social media backlash over a design critics said evoked racist minstrel-era caricatures. The retailer issued a public apology, acknowledged the product should never have reached shelves, and said it is reviewing internal processes
The Hawk Fire burning northwest of Reno, Nevada has grown to 15,051 acres with zero containment as of Monday morning, August 24, forcing approximately 42,000 people from their homes and placing another 45,000 under evacuation warnings. The human-caused fire, which ignited near Verdi on Saturday morning and exploded overnight into
Moderna and Merck announced on August 19 that their jointly developed personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran, met both its primary and key secondary endpoints in a Phase 3 clinical trial involving 1,137 melanoma patients. The treatment reduced cancer recurrence and prevented the spread of disease to other parts of the
An NPR analysis published on August 19 found that 15 U.S. states still have laws permitting public school employees to use corporal punishment on students, and that nearly 32,000 reported instances of paddling, hitting, or other forms of physical discipline were recorded in the 2021-22 school year. The feature arrived
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 held at approximately 5.6% through the second quarter of 2026, above the national unemployment rate of 4.1%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest labor market data. The underemployment rate for the same group edged up
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration upgraded a nationwide egg recall to Class I this week, its highest-risk classification, after linking nearly 19 million recalled eggs to a multistate Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak that has sickened 98 people across 17 states and hospitalized 26. The classification means the FDA has determined
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company behind the Claude model family, is in talks to acquire Israeli AI startup Decart for approximately $6 billion, a deal that would mark the company’s largest known acquisition and arrive just months before an anticipated public offering expected later this year. Key Takeaways