Month: September 2026

The World Meteorological Organization updated its El Niño outlook today, and the message was blunt: nearly a 100% chance the current El Niño event will last through February 2027. The WMO says it hasn’t issued an El Niño/La Niña update this unequivocal before, and model guidance from both the WMO and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration points to a very strong event, one that could rank among the strongest seen since the 19th century. On a planet already heated by human activity, El Niño’s usual 0.1 to 0.2°C bump, in the WMO’s estimate, could be enough to push global temperatures toward record highs and even briefly tip past 1.5°C.

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The WMO also warns that the fallout may be messy and uneven: heavier rain in some places, deeper drought in others, and extremes that are harder to pin down ahead of time. That brings a string of related risks with it, including crop stress and crop losses, power cuts, water shortages, wildfires, disease outbreaks, and broader humanitarian emergencies.

Researchers cited by experts say El Niño events are now almost 40% stronger than they were in the pre-industrial era. Add in a positive Indian Ocean Dipole and unusually warm waters in the equatorial Atlantic, and the picture gets sharper. Experts say those factors could worsen drought, intensify rainfall swings, and raise fire danger, especially across Southeast Asia.

If you track climate, food security, or public health, this is the forecast to pay attention to. UN agencies warn that 50 million additional people could face acute hunger. UNICEF says 162 million children in Eastern and Southern Africa are exposed. Experts also say the weak spots in preparedness haven’t gone away, particularly around funding, water management, protections for smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities, and national planning.

You can read the latest WMO update alongside supporting evidence from NOAA, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and national weather agencies.

Current reports suggest Apple is getting iPhone Handoff ready for iOS 27, a feature that would let one phone number work across two iPhones.

The setup, based on those reports, would live under Settings > Cellular. You’d pick a primary iPhone and a companion iPhone, keep the main eSIM on the first device, and use a companion eSIM on the second instead of paying for a duplicate mobile plan.

The interesting part is the switching. Reports say your number could move automatically to whichever iPhone you unlock, with a Dynamic Island alert showing that the handoff happened. Find My and shared location would also update to the phone you’re actually carrying, whether that’s for work, travel, the gym, or just a night out.

If you carry two iPhones, this looks like one to try when it shows up. That said, carrier support seems to be a big factor, and the rollout may start with networks such as T-Mobile in the US and Deutsche Telekom in Germany. It’s also still mostly based on a WWDC 2026 mention and an Xcode 27 Device Hub simulation, so questions around reliability, privacy, security, and a broader rollout are still open. Right now, reports point to an iOS 27 release for two iPhones signed into the same Apple ID on supported carriers.

Babylon 5: The Road Home is out now, and it’s put the spotlight back on Babylon 5, still one of the most ambitious sci-fi shows television ever produced.

Years before binge-watching was even a thing, J. Michael Straczynski built Babylon 5 as what he called a “novel for television.” The series was mapped across a planned five-year arc, so character reversals, political crises, and prophetic threads could land seasons after they were first set in motion.

The show takes place on a neutral station at the center of interstellar diplomacy. From there, Babylon 5 pulls in aliens, starships, war, peace, fascism, religion, propaganda, free will, and the human condition, all inside a universe that feels scientifically grounded and mythically huge at the same time. That’s a big part of why fans and critics still rate it so highly, and why its sense of cosmic wonder and dense lore still gets compared to Carl Sagan and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Babylon 5 also helped shape early serialized television well before Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and The Expanse. Its 1990s CGI space battles and large-scale environments do look dated here and there, but they gave the series a visual identity all its own, always in service of the story. That legacy helped Babylon 5 pick up two Hugo Awards and a Saturn Award.

If serialized sci-fi with big ideas is your thing, Babylon 5 is an easy one to pick up, and its place in TV history seems secure whether the Warner Bros. Television reboot happens or not.

You can watch Babylon 5: The Road Home now, while the reboot remains in development for a new platform.

Xiaomi used the IFA 2026 stage in Berlin today to introduce the Xiaomi 18 Fold, its latest premium book-style foldable, and to debut the company’s new 3nm XRing O3 chip.

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Xiaomi said it brought more than 380 products to its first IFA event in Berlin, but the Xiaomi 18 Fold was the one that drew the most attention. It comes with a wide, passport-style design, a 7.58-inch inner display, and a 5.38-inch outer screen. Xiaomi is also packing in a 6,000 mAh battery, 67W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, LPDDR6 support, and a 10-core all-big-core CPU that, according to the company, can push past 15,000.

The company is clearly lining the Xiaomi 18 Fold up against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. Xiaomi pointed to a reinforced hinge, stronger glass, 1.2-meter drop resistance, and a Leica co-engineered triple-camera system. Still, there’s a lot you can’t judge yet. Media were only allowed to see the device from a distance, so there’s still no real sense of how the hinge feels, how visible the crease is, how the software behaves, how the cameras perform, or what day-to-day use is actually like.

If you’ve been waiting for a foldable that looks like a real challenger, this is one to keep an eye on, especially with Xiaomi now taking a swing at Qualcomm and MediaTek with its own high-end silicon. Xiaomi says the Xiaomi 18 Fold will officially launch in China on September 7. Pricing, a broader global rollout, and wider availability still haven’t been confirmed, and early reports suggest this will be a China-first release.

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Sony and Microsoft are telling U.S. courts that if you paid more for a PlayStation or Xbox in 2025, you shouldn’t expect any of that money back, even if the companies later get tariff refunds from the U.S. government.

That position comes after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found some tariffs illegal, which opened the door for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to seek refunds from the government. At the same time, separate consumer lawsuits accuse the companies of double-dipping. In their court filings, Sony and Microsoft argue that buyers willingly paid the listed market price, received the product they paid for, and didn’t suffer any legally recognized harm or unfair treatment.

And that argument could matter well beyond game consoles. It may help shape future disputes over price increases tied to policy changes, import duties, and supply-chain shocks. The console price jumps were real. Research cited in the cases says the Xbox Series X climbed from its $500 launch price to about $800 for a 1TB model.

Sony pointed to a difficult economic climate, while Microsoft blamed market conditions and rising development costs. Consumers see it differently in these suits. They argue that tariff pressure still played a role in pushing those prices higher, so if you bought a console during that period, this is a case to watch.

If you want to follow the fight, the U.S. court filings lay it out. Sony told investors in July that it expects roughly $508 million in U.S. tariff refunds, most of that tied to PlayStation. Microsoft hasn’t disclosed that same level of detail. Nintendo is facing its own lawsuit. Some companies, including FedEx and UPS, say they would reimburse customers who directly absorbed tariff costs. And if looming U.S. semiconductor tariffs move ahead, electronics prices could rise again.

Netflix’s The Gentlemen is back for season 2, and the show has taken a darker turn, one that leans much closer to The Godfather than to the first season’s swagger. In reviews from English-language critics in both the U.K. and the U.S., Theo James’ Eddie Horniman is being read a lot like Michael Corleone: a man sliding deeper into power, compromise, and corruption.

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Season 1 moved on fast talk, crime-fueled chaos, action-comedy momentum, and that polished streaming speed. This time the mood is heavier. The story settles into a more somber drama about ambition, power, and moral rot, and Theo James has described Eddie’s path in those terms too, saying he has to “go into the mouth of the devil” and end up “fully corrupted.”

Eddie Horniman and Susie Glass are also trying to push their cannabis empire beyond England and onto an international stage, which puts them on a collision course with the Italian mafia. Some critics are into that bigger, riskier scale. Others think the plotting starts to knot itself up, loses some of the first season’s mischievous spark, and never quite earns the weight of all those The Godfather comparisons. Coverage outside that U.K.-U.S. critical lane hasn’t been nearly as hung up on the parallel.

If what you liked most about season 1 was its lighter touch, this larger swing may not feel like enough of a payoff to make it worth watching. Netflix, though, clearly has plenty invested in it. By the company’s own numbers, season 1 drew 12.2 million views in its first week in March 2024, hit the top of the U.S. streaming charts, and later got renewed for both seasons 2 and 3.

You can watch The Gentlemen on Netflix. The real bet is whether Eddie Horniman works for you more as a tragic kingpin than he did as a charming outsider.

Apple’s iPhone Air 2 is already being talked about for spring 2027. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and analyst Jeff Pu both frame it as Apple’s next correction, a second pass on the first iPhone Air with a larger battery, a second rear camera, and a smaller Dynamic Island, which the original Air didn’t have.

If the first Apple iPhone Air left you cold, the early details here sound more convincing. Reports point to a 48MP ultra-wide camera, a battery close to 3,500mAh instead of the first iPhone Air’s 3,149mAh, and an A20 Pro chip built on a 2nm process, which should help with efficiency while keeping the ultra-thin design intact.

There may be more screen space too. That matters, because the September 2025 Apple iPhone Air arrived with just one rear camera and a smaller battery than the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup, even at a premium price. The result, according to reports, was a modest 6% share of US iPhone sales in Q4 2025. The Apple iPhone Air reportedly did better in South Korea and Japan, but many buyers were still said to move on to Pro models later.

So if battery life or camera flexibility made you pass on the first Apple iPhone Air, this cleaner, better-balanced version may be the one to wait for. Still, if Apple doesn’t add more Pro-level features, it could end up staying a niche model instead of turning into a real hit.

And if Gurman and Pu have the timing right, you won’t be seeing the Apple iPhone Air 2 this autumn. The current expectation is a spring 2027 launch alongside the iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e, part of Apple’s staggered release plan ahead of a fall 2026 foldable Ultra.