PHOTO: EPA
While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Sept 11, 2026
· The Straits TimesHouthis advance in Yemen, threaten Saudi oil exports
Iran-aligned Houthis seized control of Yemen’s port city of Mocha on Sept 10 and advanced down the Red Sea coast to strategic islands, military sources said, hours after President Donald Trump said he expected the Iran war to end after the US midterm elections.
Yemeni government military sources said the Houthis had gained further leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern outlet of the Red Sea and one of the world’s most important shipping routes, and had reached the islands of Hanish.
If the Houthis were to gain control of the waterway on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz, it could give their backer Iran a critical advantage in the war with the United States, reducing supplies through a second major transit corridor and sending oil prices surging.
It could also make it harder for Trump to find an exit from a war that has hurt his Republican Party’s electoral prospects ahead of the November midterms.
Anthropic disrupts Russian, Chinese AI campaigns
Anthropic on Sept 10 said it had disrupted several alleged malicious uses of its Claude models over the past eight months, including a suspected Russia-linked cyber espionage campaign and efforts by Chinese AI firms it accused of trying to extract and replicate Claude’s capabilities.
Cybercriminals and state-backed hackers were increasingly using AI not just to assist with tasks but to orchestrate and execute large portions of cyberattacks, Anthropic said in its latest Threat Intelligence report, adding that humans were often overseers rather than hands-on operators in the campaigns.
Anthropic said it had disrupted what it described as attacks from seven China-based laboratories during that period. Among the labs Anthropic named were tech giant Alibaba, Moonshot, DeepSeek and Xiaomi.
At least five killed in strike on Ukrainian shopping centre
At least five people were killed and nearly 70 others wounded on Sept 10 when a Russian strike hit a shopping centre in Pavlohrad, central Ukraine, the authorities announced.
The attack came as both sides step up long-range barrages on each other hundreds of kilometres behind the front lines, increasingly targeting civilian sites alongside factories, refineries, warehouses and ports.
According to statistics verified by the United Nations, civilian deaths in Ukraine are running at their highest rate since the first months after Russia invaded in February 2022.
Several killed in bus crash near Swiss Alpine village
A number of people were killed and several others injured after a bus carrying a Dutch tour party flipped over in a remote Alpine region of eastern Switzerland, police said on Sept 10.
Police in the canton of Graubuenden said the accident occurred near to the village of Susch, and images of the scene published online showed the vehicle lying on its side next to the road, surrounded by police and emergency service personnel.
A spokeswoman for the General Dutch Association of Travel Companies (ANVR), acting as spokesperson for tour operator OAD, said a serious accident had taken place involving an OAD bus and that 48 passengers were on board, all Dutch nationals.
Bayeux Tapestry ‘mania’ sweeps UK as exhibition opens
London’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition opened on Sept 10 to a British public gripped by “mania” over the medieval artwork depicting the Norman conquest of England, on display outside France for the first time.
Excited visitors who had tickets for the first day of the sold-out exhibition queued outside the British Museum ahead of the opening, where some staff had donned period costumes.
“It is back here for the first time in 950 years!” 46-year-old Catherine Pitt told AFP in the queue outside the museum entrance.