September 24: Paramount–Warner Settlement Awaits Court Approval
Today's items cover a Paramount–Warner settlement awaiting court approval, the 47-mile Big Bend 1 border-wall project, NOAA's 132-year heat record, and new FAA SMART and Huawei Atlas 960E systems.
A compact or covenant, especially an agreement between a pope and a sovereign or government regulating ecclesiastical matters.1
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries traces the word to early-17th-century French or Latin concordatum, from Latin concordare, meaning to be of one mind.2
California Reaches a Paramount–Warner Settlement
California Attorney General Rob Bonta says a coalition of 12 attorneys general reached a settlement with Paramount Skydance over the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The court still must approve it. The settlement includes a five-year court-enforceable commitment to increase film output, at least $1.5 billion in additional domestic film production, and a $47.5 million worker fund.3
Reuters reports quotas of 30 movies in each of the first two years and 32 in each of the next three. Bonta's release says the agreement resolves the states' antitrust concerns but is not a vote of support for the merger; court approval remains pending.43
Big Bend 1 Border-Wall Construction Begins
CBP's project map lists Big Bend 1 at 47.3 miles and separately lists Big Bend 2.5 AP reports that construction has begun there, with the first panels going up in Hudspeth County on September 15.6
AP places the work among five project areas spanning roughly 500 miles and distinguishes it from the temporarily paused project inside Big Bend National Park. Landowners, environmental groups, businesses, and ranchers oppose the wider buildout, according to AP.6
NOAA Records the Warmest U.S. Summer in 132 Years
NOAA/NCEI says meteorological summer 2026 was the warmest summer for the contiguous United States in its 132-year record. August averaged 75.6°F, the warmest August since 1895, while the average daytime maximum reached a record 88.6°F.7
NOAA lists above-average wildfire potential in several regions for September; Al Jazeera's AFP report adds drought and fire context, but the nationwide temperature record is a measurement of the past season, not a forecast for a particular place.8
FAA Begins Limited Use of SMART Near Washington
The FAA has begun limited use of SMART, or Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, around Washington, D.C. The system centralizes 200 data streams, including weather, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing, then uses an AI-supported engine to visualize future congestion and weather constraints.9
Reuters reports that the predictive software operates under an $875 million, 12-year contract with Air Space Intelligence and is planned for gradual expansion. FAA staff review its recommendations: SMART does not replace controllers or take control of aircraft.109
Huawei Announces the Atlas 960E SuperPoD
Huawei announced the Atlas 960E SuperPoD at HUAWEI CONNECT 2026. The company says UnifiedBus and Hi-ONE can link up to 4,096 NPUs and deliver 8 EFLOPS at FP8 precision or 16 EFLOPS at FP4, for training and inference of 10-trillion-parameter models.11
AP describes the system as a faster successor and places it in China's push for chip self-reliance and competition with Nvidia. Huawei's scale and performance figures are claims from its release; the cited reporting supplies no independent benchmark for them.12
Sources
- Merriam-Webster · concordat
- Oxford Learner's Dictionaries · concordat
- California Attorney General · Paramount–Warner settlement release
- Reuters · Paramount settles with California and other states
- CBP · SMART Wall map
- Associated Press · Big Bend 1 border-wall construction
- NOAA/NCEI · National Climate Report for August 2026
- Al Jazeera/AFP · U.S. records hottest summer in 132 years
- FAA · State-of-the-art air traffic control announcement
- Reuters · FAA begins use of AI tool
- Huawei · Atlas 960E SuperPoD announcement
- Associated Press · Huawei AI chips and SuperPoD