While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 1, 2026
Yaniv Hayun (centre) - one of the passengers who helped incapacitate an attacker on a flydubai flight from the UAE to Israel - returning to Israel on Sept 30.
Israel’s leader credited the Indian pilot of a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, as well as the aircraft’s passengers, with averting catastrophe on Sept 30 after the man was attacked by his co-pilot, sparking a fight for control of the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot of the flydubai jet had been trying to crash it and kill all its passengers, with Israel’s foreign ministry denouncing the incident as “an attempted terrorist attack” aimed at damaging the country’s relationship with one of its key Middle Eastern partners.
Passengers gave a similar account of the incident, describing rushing the cockpit after the plane suddenly plummeted, losing around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute, according to the Flightradar24 website.
Flydubai said all the passengers – of whom 166 out of 174 were Israeli, according to media reports – were safe, adding that the reasons for the altercation were unknown.
US President Donald Trump said on Sept 30 he has done “a very bad job” of explaining his economic record as his job approval rating sags under the weight of high gasoline prices ahead of the November midterm elections.
Trump, speaking to a supportive crowd at a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House, made the comment as he prepares to embark on a 32-day campaign blitz for Republican candidates ahead of the Nov 3 elections that will decide whether his party retains control of the US Congress.
“I’ve done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing,” Trump said, insisting that “the country’s doing better than it has ever done.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sept 30 visited front-line troops near Lyman, an embattled town in eastern Ukraine, where they have launched a counter-offensive against Russian forces and said he had discussed their battles.
“Today, I met here with the warriors carrying out missions in the Lyman sector and presented them with state awards. I also spoke with the brigade commander about the missions the unit is carrying out,” Zelensky said on social media, posting a video of him at a command post.
The Ukrainian leader has frequently visited front-line areas since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo announced on Sept 30 that he had left the team’s training camp in Denmark after coach Jorge Jesus told reporters that the striker would be dropped for their next match.
Ronaldo had been due to train with his team-mates at the Parken stadium in Copenhagen on Sept 30 but left abruptly after Jesus’ press conference.
The veteran coach had said that Ronaldo, who spent the entire match on the bench against Norway on Sept 27, would not start in the Oct 1 Nations League clash away to Denmark either.
Former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola threw his weight behind the club on Sept 30 after a bombshell verdict on Premier League financial rule breaches plunged their future into serious doubt.
The former boss broke his silence 24 hours after it was announced that the Abu Dhabi-backed club had been found guilty of more than 100 breaches of financial rules in the world’s richest domestic league.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters described the disciplinary case and the decision by an independent commission as the “most significant in Premier League history”.
