Evening edition··Coverage: since the afternoon brief (~13:25 → 19:40 CEST)
What matters
Mistral’s 1T-parameter Large 4 takes aim at the open-weight crown; Trump says Iran could “take out” LA and San Diego; Paramount closes its Warner takeover as Skydance.
Public preview API on Mistral Studio today; Mistral says weights ship by the end of the month. 1 trillion parameters, 49B active, natively multimodal.
Trained from scratch on 3,800 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs in Mistral’s own European data centres; a Europe deployment runs end-to-end under EU law.
Pitch is cyber defence: Mistral says it ranks top five on the Artificial Analysis Cyber Index and scores 82% on a reproduce-and-patch test where Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra score near zero because they refuse.
Why it matters —It is the strongest open-weight claim from outside China in a while, and the cyber angle (“we don’t refuse security work”) is a direct shot at US closed models.
Nano Banana 2.1 (image generation/editing): Google claims gains in visual design, mask-based editing, subject consistency and more natural images. It is live in the Gemini app, AI Studio and AI Mode in Search.
Announced tonight on Google’s X accounts; Search VP Robby Stein says it is rolling out in AI Mode (🍌 icon in the Google app).
Why it matters —Same day, two directions: an on-device open model for local RAG/search, and a tighter paywall on the hosted Gemini app.
Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, on war-driven high prices: “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego.” Parts of the crowd cheered.
Newsom called it “deranged and dangerous — if not treasonous” and told California’s State Threat Assessment Center to monitor whether foreign actors read it as an invitation.
Why it matters —The White House reading is plausible, but the remark lands four weeks before midterms in an unpopular war, and Republicans in swing seats are distancing themselves.
Closed Tuesday. Skydance combines the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios, HBO Max, Paramount+, CBS News and CNN. David Ellison leads it with ex-Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO.
Deal value is reported at $110–111bn; THR says the new owner is carrying more than $80bn of debt. Shares start trading as SKYD this week.
Why it matters —Two of Hollywood’s five legacy studios and two major US newsrooms now sit under one owner, the Ellisons, and press-freedom conditions are written into the settlement.
Update to the Rausch vote: Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, on the AfD’s völkisch wing, won the first vice-presidency with 44 of 82 votes, 38 against and no abstentions.
BSW had said it would not back him. Its group leader Thomas Schulze then handed him flowers, and one BSW MP applauded; the BSW still insists it didn’t vote for him.
Why it matters —A second AfD presidium seat on day one makes the “secret ballot leak” look less like an accident and puts the CDU under pressure ahead of December’s premier vote.
Forsa (29 Sep–5 Oct, n=2,502): AfD 26%, CDU/CSU 19%, Greens 17% (+1), SPD 14%. Only 11% are satisfied with Merz (87% not), including 60% of Union supporters who are dissatisfied.
Wednesday evening’s coalition committee covers pensions, care and taxes. The SPD no longer wants to scrap penalty-free retirement after 45 contribution years, a key part of the pension financing plan.
Why it matters —With the Union stuck under 20% and reforms stalled, Wednesday is a test of whether the coalition can still agree on anything major.
The Commission’s 25-page communication would add “safeguards” for 15 years after accession against blocking EU business or rolling back the rule of law, with easier sanctions.
Newcomers would also commit not to veto later candidates. The Commission wants current members to move from unanimity to majority voting in areas like foreign policy, which looks unlikely to pass.
Why it matters —It is the Hungary lesson written into the treaties-to-be, and it signals that Ukraine’s path will come with farm carve-outs.
Google’s PPA finances upgrades at six operating Constellation plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey (11 reactors), adding 890 MW to the PJM grid.
Yahoo Finance puts it at $4.3bn over 20 years. A separate 15-year supply agreement covers another 2.7 GW, about 3.6 GW in total.
Why it matters —Squeezing more out of existing reactors is the fastest way to add firm power for data centres, and the AI-power race keeps landing on nuclear.
Polars 2.0 is out: first out-of-core (spill-to-disk) support, SQL as a first-class citizen, and stricter dtypes. Its own TPC-H/TPC-DS-derived runs have it ahead of DuckDB and DataFusion.Polars blog
49ers LB Dre Greenlaw was fined $11,941 for taunting the Broncos bench and ex-coach Sean Payton in Sunday’s 24-14 win. He also led the team with 12 tackles and a forced fumble.Niners Wire / VC Star
