Coast Guard Searches Off Nantucket for Missing Medical Jet, Trump Rallies in Ohio, September Jobs Miss Badly: Saturday's Top News

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2026 — The Coast Guard kept searching the Atlantic for a medical jet that vanished off Nantucket, the president took his midterm pitch to Ohio, and the September jobs report landed with a thud. Tech kept the pressure on: OpenAI fired three researchers, and Apple moved to lock AI agents out of your files. Here are the nine stories that mattered.

1. Coast Guard searches off Nantucket for a medical jet that vanished with six aboard

A Latitude Air Ambulance Gulfstream carrying six people disappeared early Saturday on a flight from Bermuda to Boston, and the Coast Guard is running an air-and-sea search roughly 13 nautical miles south of Nantucket. Flight-tracking data shows the jet plunging about 13,000 feet in roughly two minutes shortly after 1 a.m. before contact was lost. As of Saturday afternoon, authorities had confirmed no crash, no wreckage and no casualties — the search was still active. Read our developing story

2. Trump rallies in Ohio: defends data centers, tells voters to act like he's on the ballot

President Trump campaigned Saturday at Butler High School in Vandalia, Ohio, stumping for Senator Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy one month before the November 3 midterms. He defended the rapid buildout of massive data centers — 'You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China,' he warned — tying the boom to the U.S. race with China on what he called 'superintelligence.' 'Please pretend that I'm on the ballot, and you need to turn out for a midterm victory,' he told the crowd, also backing a Husted bill to stop data centers from raising electricity costs, which he said nearly every Senate Democrat had voted to block days earlier.

3. September jobs report: just 29,000 jobs added, far below expectations

Employers added only 29,000 jobs in September, the Labor Department said Friday — well below the 84,000 economists expected — while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent. July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000 jobs, dragging July's totals into the red. The weak report collapsed expectations for an October rate hike — traders now see about a 17 percent chance, down from 36 percent a week ago — though most still project another quarter-point hike in December. Mortgage rates, meanwhile, logged their largest weekly gain in four years.

4. OpenAI fires three researchers over mishandled 'sensitive information'

OpenAI has dismissed three researchers for allegedly mishandling sensitive company information, confirming the firings to the BBC on Friday. At least two of the three worked in safety research, and the material involved work connected to an external organization that analyzes AI models. A spokesperson said the investigation 'confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work' — but the company did not name the employees, say what was shared, or detail what the investigation found. The firings land as OpenAI faces scrutiny over rogue model behavior, including a July incident in which a company AI system breached Hugging Face and this week's notice to more than 100 organizations about unauthorized agent activity.

5. Apple moves to lock AI agents out of your files, messages and browsing history

Apple announced it will require 'very explicit user action' before apps can read a user's full filesystem, messages and browsing history, pointing directly at the risks of increasingly autonomous AI agents. The move follows reports that Meta's Muse AI accessed iPhone and Mac messages without clear user awareness, plus a separate ChatGPT Mac app vulnerability covered by The Verge and TechCrunch. Developer reaction on Hacker News split: some welcomed per-folder granularity, others bristled at Apple calling disk access 'extraordinary' when it used to be the baseline assumption for software on hardware you own.

6. Supreme Court opens a heavyweight term on Monday

The justices begin the October term Monday, October 5, with arguments in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County — the first big test of whether state and local governments can sue fossil-fuel companies over climate damages. The docket also holds a Second Amendment challenge to AR-15-style rifle bans (Viramontes v. Cook County), a fight over Arizona's proof-of-citizenship voter registration rules, religion cases on taxpayer-funded preschool and Catholic preschools, and Trump-administration immigration policies on mandatory detention and rapid third-country removals. The term follows a session that struck down the president's tariffs and his executive order on birthright citizenship — and Reuters reports the administration is already teeing up appeals on its military transgender ban, academic grant cuts and asylum suspension.

7. SNL: Dakota Johnson hosts, Turnstile debuts, and Taylor Swift crashes the monologue

'Saturday Night Live' aired Season 52, Episode 2 on Saturday: Dakota Johnson hosted for the third time and Baltimore rock band Turnstile made their musical-guest debut, playing 'Birds' and a medley of 'I Care' and 'Dull.' The night's biggest cheer came from the opening monologue, when Taylor Swift walked out and returned during the goodnights to hand Johnson a birthday cake — Johnson turns 37 on Sunday. The episode was delayed about 11 minutes in some markets by an overrunning Washington-USC game. More on the show

8. Lindsay Lohan recreates the 'It's October 3' scene for Mean Girls Day

Lindsay Lohan gave Mean Girls fans the perfect October 3 gift: an Instagram video recreating Cady Heron's iconic 'It's October 3' moment, complete with a laugh and a wink at the camera. The video drew more than 4 million views on TikTok, over 2 million on X and 1.4 million likes on Instagram, where Jonathan Bennett — the film's Aaron Samuels — replied: 'This made me miss you two so much!' Twenty-two years after the 2004 film, October 3 remains the internet's unofficial Mean Girls holiday. More culture

9. Abbott Elementary returns Wednesday with season 6

School's back in session: Abbott Elementary returns Wednesday, October 7, for season 6 on ABC, with the trailer teasing Gregory's promotion to assistant principal, Melissa as union rep, a Katy Mixon guest spot, and the milestone 100th episode, 'One Hundred.' Watch the trailer and see what's new