September 24, 2026

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G’day. If you’re looking for a way to spend 18 hours, Qantas said it’s planning to start selling tickets for direct New York to Sydney flights next year, with the first flights taking off in 2028. That’s just an hour shorter than the world’s current longest flight (New York–Singapore), but it’ll be two hours shorter than the soon-to-be longest, the 20-hour London–Sydney flight Qantas plans to debut next year. None of these flights are recommended for passengers who hog the armrests, take their socks off, or listen to audio without headphones.

—Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Xi Jinping’s high-stakes US visit
McDonald’s plan to lure back diners
Robots walking a fashion runway

Markets

Nasdaq

26,936.04

-1.13%

S&P

7,706.03

-0.76%

Dow

51,511.59

-0.68%

10-Year

5.114%

-- bps

Bitcoin

$84,107.34

-2.81%

Royal Caribbean

$230.3

-1.95%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 10:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: If red’s not your color, you may want to avoid looking at yesterday’s stock charts: Stocks fell as bond yields surged (more on that later).
Stock spotlight: Investors did not respond royally to Royal Caribbean’s announcement that it’s buying a 50% stake in the parent company of Sandals and Beaches Resorts for $3 billion, sending the cruise operator’s stock to a 52-week low during the day.

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TAKE XI TO YOUR LEADER

Xi is in the US for talks with Trump

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

China’s President Xi Jinping arrived yesterday for a state visit to the US. It’s his first time here since 2015, and he and President Trump will have a three-day huddle that concludes tomorrow and could have ramifications for artificial intelligence, trade, and the war in Iran.

Trump made the grand gesture of meeting Xi when his plane landed at Joint Base Andrews in Washington, DC, yesterday rather than at the White House, not unlike when people met their loved ones at the airport gate during that montage in Love Actually. Tonight, Trump will host a slew of CEOs at a state dinner for Xi, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

One major announcement has already been made: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News yesterday after Xi arrived that a trade truce between the US and China that ended steep duties on Chinese goods by the US and Beijing’s tight restrictions on rare earth exports had been extended to Jan. 10.

There’s a lot to talk about

The big items on the agenda for the first meeting between Trump and Xi since the former went to Beijing in May include:

AI: Less than two weeks after a warning about AI growing too quickly from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the AI race will be atop the Trump/Xi agenda. Both the US and China are racing to assert dominance in the tech.
Middle East: China is Iran’s top trading partner. Some US lawmakers have implored Trump to push Xi into pressuring Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz. However, it’s unlikely that China will exert influence on Iran.
Taiwan: Xi will forcefully stake China’s claim to Taiwan. It’s an awkward topic for the US, which sold Taiwan $11 billion in arms in December and has another $14 billion arms purchase that’s been on hold for months, per Reuters. Trump said after May talks with Xi that the latter deal was “a very good negotiating chip.”

However…experts aren’t expecting many deliverables from the summit, unless you count the memes Musk will create on his way home from the dinner tonight.—DL

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World

Tour de headlines

Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Meta Connect developer conference.

Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

👓 Meta unveils camera-free Ray-Bans and Meta VR Glasses. In its continued quest to be the company whose tech you wear on your face, Meta announced new glasses products at its developer conference yesterday. The company is expanding its line of smart glasses with the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio, which will start at $349. Camera-free models get longer battery life. They could also help Meta beat the “pervert glasses” rap that critics with privacy concerns have given smart glasses—though the audio aspect still raises some privacy fears. CEO Mark Zuckerberg further revealed plans to fuse smart glasses with Meta’s popular AI agent Muse, as well as other Muse hardware. The company also debuted Meta VR Glasses—and they’re called glasses rather than a headset for a reason. There’s no head strap and they resemble large black sunglasses with several major components in an external pack. And at $1,299, they’re cheaper than Apple’s Vision Pro.

🇮🇷 Iran’s president defiant in UN speech. A day after President Trump stood at a United Nations podium and threatened to “annihilate” Iran, the country’s President Masoud Pezeshkian accused the US and Israel of creating global instability. Pezeshkian signaled during his UN General Assembly remarks that Iran was open to further talks to end the conflict, but said: “Iran must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us: that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force.” He also said Iran would not give up its nuclear program, which he claimed was peaceful, saying, “We will not bow our head.”

🏦 Bond yields spiked to their highest levels since 2007. The bond market was in sell-off mode yesterday, with the yield on 10-year notes experiencing its biggest one-day jump in over a year. Ten-year yields hit 5.116%, a level not seen since July 2007, while two-year yields, which are sensitive to Fed rate hikes, reached their highest level since 2024, and the 30-year Treasury yield soared to its highest levels since mid-2007, per CNBC. What’s got bond buyers so nervous that yields are back up to where they were the year the iPhone debuted (remember, yields move in the opposite direction from price)? High oil prices, new data showing stronger-than-expected US manufacturing activity, and a warning from a Fed official, all of which pointed to the possibility of elevated inflation.—AR

Reader Poll

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GASSED & FURIOUS

Oil leaders panic as US mulls limiting diesel exports

Truck driver pumping gas into a semi truck at a gas station

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The White House and the fuel industry are getting along like oil and water after President Trump said this week that he’s considering a temporary export ban on US diesel—a rare move that risks roiling global markets, analysts widely believe.

The plan isn’t quite clear:

After Trump expressed support for a ban on diesel exports on Tuesday, startled oil execs and lobbyists rushed to voice their opposition to Republican lawmakers and administration members, the Wall Street Journal reported.
That night, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told industry CEOs that a 90-day ban was likely coming, according to Politico. The White House denied that report.
Yesterday, Wright suggested that the administration would instead implement a partial “voluntary” export cap.

If diesel exports get restricted, Americans could see lower short-term diesel prices due to an initial domestic supply glut, but Goldman Sachs projected that a ban would ultimately reduce US fuel production and raise prices at the pump. US oil companies could also lose billions of dollars in overseas sales, and industry officials argue that even temporary limitations could push US import prices higher by spiking international transportation costs.

So, what’s the point of this? The Iran war has pushed fuel prices to record highs, the midterm elections are coming up, and recent NBC polling shows that voters are souring on the Trump administration’s economic handling. The GOP may be looking for “a politically popular ‘quick fix,’” according to Reuters’ energy columnist Ron Bousso.—ML

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LOOK WHAT THE SNACK WRAP DID

The Golden Arches are in a rebuilding year

Illustration of a McDonald's french fry container with lots of money pouring into it.

Nick Iluzada

There’s still no word on whether or not execs will ever try to bring back Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s, but the Golden Arches announced a huge overhaul yesterday. The burger chain will invest $8.5 billion over the next decade to renovate its 44,000 franchises worldwide.

It’s not just a franchise facelift. Rival fast-food chains are horning in on Ronald McDonald’s turf, and McDonald’s has experienced a slowdown in the last few months. It’s also facing rising costs for beef and labor, as well as some misses on recent short-term promotions, so the chain is trying to become more well-rounded:

McDonald’s will introduce more specialty drinks and breakfast options. Plus, it’ll put more chicken items on the menu. It wants to increase its market share in both the chicken and beverage categories by 1.5 percentage points in the next four years.
The company wants to keep up with the growing number of customers using GLP-1s who are looking to eat more protein. It’s testing options like chicken and burger bowls and egg bites.
McDonald’s will roll out its generative-AI system, called ArchIQ, across stores and franchise locations to take orders at its drive-thrus, and to help manage schedule shifts and inventory.

Investors aren’t convinced yet. There’s a reason the chain needs a new plan: CEO Chris Kempczinski said that he expects high inflation and flat traffic to continue to be challenges. The company’s stock fell yesterday to its lowest level since 2022.—MM

MOLLY EXPLAINS THE INTERNET

Humanoids walked Vogue World runway

Humanoid robot walking on the runway with a human model in yellow outfit at Vogue World Milan

Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images

The online world can be a beautiful yet confusing series of tubes. On Thursdays, the Brew’s Molly Liebergall untangles them for you.

This week, one of the fashion industry’s biggest spectacles said: Let your robot move to the music. And the public said: Absolutely not.

On Tuesday in Milan, a group of Unitree robots—who weren’t wearing clothes—strutted the runway and gestured for the crowd to make some noise at Vogue’s annual star-studded fashion event, Vogue World, which was billed as a celebration of Italian craftsmanship in the AI era.

A fashion don’t? Online commenters (and some IRL attendees) were peeved about the robots’ participation:

During the event, Miuccia Prada and Valentino Creative Director Alessandro Michele appeared downright sullen about the whole thing. On the other hand, Donatella Versace and Jennifer Lopez clapped and smiled.
Clips of the bionic parade garnered hundreds of thousands of views on social media. “The irony of celebrating craftsmanship and bringing out robots :-/,” read one online reaction, which pretty much sums up the internet’s feedback.

Is it all corporate synergy? The show was also sponsored by Meta Glasses, with “additional support” from OpenAI, The Cut noted. Some questions about the bots may be answered today when fashion writer Louis Pisano publishes an interview with Vogue World’s creative director.

Big week for robot invasions: A troupe of Unitree robots made it to the Top 10 on America’s Got Talent but was edged out of the top five by human contestants during last night’s finale.—ML

Three Headlines and a Lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than your post-dinner plans. Can you spot the odd one out?

A raccoon boot camp in Mississippi teaches abandoned kits survival skills
Things are so bad, people are longing for cringey millennial culture
We’ve lost nearly 75% of “free bread” restaurants in the last 5 years, new tracker says
The high-stakes pursuit of smuggling butter home from Paris

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We made up the one about the demise of free bread.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: deliverables, meaning “a tangible or intangible product, service, or result produced and handed over as part of a project.” Thanks to Jeffrey Clawson from Cleveland for producing the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, and Matty Merritt

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☕ Mr. Xi goes to Washington