Morning Digest
35 stories from 8 sources, 71 more held back.
There are millions of powered wheelchair users in the U.S. today. Assistive Technology Development Inc., or ATDev, aims to use robotics to give these users more independence and freedom in their lives. “I’ve been a power wheelchair user for over 30 years, my whole life really,” Owen Kent, founder and chief marketing officer at ATDev, told The Robot Report.
Off-road physical AI company Agtonomy has expanded its commercial platform with fully autonomous multi-point turning and enhanced passive data collection. The company said this enables farm equipment to execute complex maneuvers in tight headland spaces without human intervention. Agtonomy develops full-autonomy packages that retrofit vehicles from its OEM partners, Kubota and Bobcat.
Today, humanoid robot OEMs are facing one central challenge: How do they bridge the gap between a working prototype and a manufacturable, scalable product? according to Kollmorgen. While software iterates in weeks, motion hardware moves from paper to functional sample in months and to volume production in years. That mismatch—not concept design—is often the real bottleneck.
This week, Unitree Robotics made its debut on Shanghai’s STAR Market, closing its first day 460% higher. The company raised 6.1 billion yuan, around $905 million U.S., with its initial public offering. Unitree said it is the first major legged robotics company to go pubic.
Russian farmer Nikolay Mukhin, who was fined for attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian drone with his shotgun, has told RT that his actions were motivated by love for his motherland. The 66-year-old vowed to appeal the court’s decision, and the Volgograd Region prosecutor’s office is now siding with him amid a public outcry.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is facing his gravest political challenge in years, major US and European media outlets have reported, as a new corruption scandal engulfs his office and a former official openly challenges his leadership.
Israel has acknowledged that its troops killed Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, and opened a criminal investigation into the incident. At the same time, it has refused to pursue a probe into the death of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in a separate attack.
Japan ‘playing with fire’ over nuclear ambitions – China. Russia and China are both opposed to Japan’s accelerating militarization and growing debate over acquiring nuclear weapons, Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, has said, warning that Tokyo’s policies could trigger a new arms race.
Bangladeshi lawmakers have elected Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a candidate of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as the country’s 23rd president. The former secretary-general of the BNP secured 255 parliamentary votes in the presidential election, while Oli Ahmed, a former army colonel from the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, received 88 votes.
Residents of a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut have said they will not trade the group’s weapons for reconstruction money, while decrying a US-brokered framework peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
An active-duty Air Force major who went on cable news and directly accused Donald Trump of violating the Constitution was arrested less than 24 hours later, making that the second time he’s been arrested for upholding his oath. Senate Republicans are quietly panicking that the growing backlash against data centers could cost them a crucial Senate seat in a reliably red state.
Donald Trump was caught on camera this week holding a “cheat sheet” in the Oval Office, the same kind of note card Republicans once said was proof Joe Biden had dementia. Newly surfaced video shows Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sitting almost completely motionless for hours during a Senate vote session just days before he completely vanished from public view.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, U.S., July 31, 2026.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts caught up for a few minutes after practice Thursday -- a notable development after the Patriots receiver revealed Wednesday that the former teammates had not spoken since he was traded to New England by the Eagles in June.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said allowing athletes who have signed professional contracts back into college sports "fuels disruption" and should not be allowed, according to an affidavit filed in a Louisiana courthouse last week.
The new deal, which adds two additional years and is pending approval by the OU board of regents, is expected to average more than $10.5 million per season, sources told ESPN. Venables, 55, led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff in 2025 -- the school's first appearance since the 2019 season. Oklahoma went 10-3, losing to Alabama in the CFP.
Dolphins offensive tackle Austin Jackson and Giants right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor were among those to be taken off the field. Jackson and Eluemumor were each replaced for at least a series. Quarterback Jameis Winston was also removed for a couple plays after being in the middle of a scrum.
Free agent James Harden has agreed to a new three-year, $97 million contract to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, with a player option for 2028-29 and a trade kicker, agents Mike Silverman, Troy Payne and Brandon Grier of Equity Sports told ESPN on Thursday.
Ask longtime MLB pitcher and current MLB Network host Ryan Dempster a question today at 2 p.m. ET when he joins Chatting Practice Powered by Zoom Events.
Shaw landed on the 10-day Injured List on June 29 with a left-hand sprain that he suffered while fouling off a pitch. Shaw, 24, is hitting .246/.322/.415 (105 OPS+) through 56 games with Chicago this season. He also spent time on the IL earlier in the year with back tightness.
It’s a long season, as they say. And that means a long runway for players looking to find their footing. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not the end of the story of your season.
MLB Pipeline gave a full refresh to its Top 100 Prospects list last week -- and each team’s Top 30 -- now that the 2026 draftees have joined their respective organizations. That makes it as good a time as any to look at the biggest breakout players in Minor Leagues. Some of these players were high Draft picks or on the preseason Top 100 Prospects list.
CHICAGO -- With Dansby Swanson currently on the injured list and sidelined for at least the next month, the Cubs’ depth at shortstop has been thinned at a crucial point in the baseball calendar. On Wednesday, the Cubs made a move to boost the depth chart, claiming utility man Gabriel Arias off waivers from the Mets to add a layer of insurance not only at shortstop, but around the infield.
A los aficionados del béisbol de Chicago puede que no les guste, pero no lo olvidarán. Con los White Sox venciendo a los Cubs 3-0 el miércoles en Wrigley Field, la mejor serie Crosstown de todas terminó en un empate 3-3. Sí, leíste bien, la mejor, desde que el juego entre ligas empezó en las Grandes Ligas en 1997.
Chicago baseball fans might not love it, but they won’t forget it. With the White Sox beating the Cubs 3-0 Wednesday at Wrigley Field, the best Crosstown season series of ’em all ended in a 3-3 deadlock. Yes, you read that correctly — the best, since interleague play began in the major leagues in 1997.
If you had to choose one word to sum up Clay Holmes’ 2026, what would it be? “He’s been disgusting all season, man,” outfielder Tyrone Taylor said. That’s a compliment, by the way.
The overwhelming majority of the guys to play for the Cubs aren’t Chicago born and bred, so excuse them for not seeing the Crosstown series against the White Sox as the biggest three days of the year.
This site is free thanks to our community of supporters. Voluntary donations from readers like you keep our news accessible for everyone. White Sox hold Cubs to two hits, avoid sweep with shutout win in Crosstown series finale.
Since perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, were discovered in 1934, manufacturers have found new uses and developed a range of chemicals in the family to use in various products such as cookware, food packaging, aerospace components and especially, semiconductors.
Both of Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are separately working toward a combined goal of building out of 100 gigawatts per year of manufactured solar power capacity in the United States, the CEO said at the World Economic Forum at the start of the year. “That’ll probably take us three years or something,” Musk said at the event.
The bill comes at a time when manufacturers in Illinois and the United States as a whole are experiencing an acute worker shortage, despite some evidence that manufacturing jobs are increasing due to reshoring efforts.
Ebm-Papst is headquartered in Mulfingen, Germany, and was established in 1963. The company has more than 13,000 employees worldwide, with operations in about 40 countries including two U.S. sales offices in Connecticut and Tennessee, according to the website. Madison Air has also been one of the Germany-based manufacturer’s longstanding customers, President and CEO Jill Wyant said in a statement.
I tasked Claude Fable 5 running in Claude Code for web with the following research task:. Put https://smolmachines.com through its paces as a fast secure sandbox.
My hypothesis is that there is a new opportunity for Extensible Software on the web. LLMs radically lower the cost of authoring extensions, and modern sandbox primitives lower the deployment cost and provide good security boundaries. We can build our app as a solid, accountable core, and allow users to safely extend it in many directions by having LLMs fill in the missing pieces.
Last week I recorded an episode of the Talking Postgres podcast with Claire Giordano on the subject of “How AI is changing software development”. We had a really great conversation. Here are a couple of my highlights from a lightly edited transcript (prompt to Claude: “very minor edits to remove disfluencies”).
Russian farmer Nikolay Mukhin, who was fined for attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian drone with his shotgun, has told RT that his actions were motivated by love for his motherland. The 66-year-old vowed to appeal the court’s decision, and the Volgograd Region prosecutor’s office is now siding with him amid a public outcry.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is facing his gravest political challenge in years, major US and European media outlets have reported, as a new corruption scandal engulfs his office and a former official openly challenges his leadership.
Israel has acknowledged that its troops killed Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, and opened a criminal investigation into the incident. At the same time, it has refused to pursue a probe into the death of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in a separate attack.
Japan ‘playing with fire’ over nuclear ambitions – China. Russia and China are both opposed to Japan’s accelerating militarization and growing debate over acquiring nuclear weapons, Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, has said, warning that Tokyo’s policies could trigger a new arms race.
Bangladeshi lawmakers have elected Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a candidate of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as the country’s 23rd president. The former secretary-general of the BNP secured 255 parliamentary votes in the presidential election, while Oli Ahmed, a former army colonel from the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, received 88 votes.
Residents of a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut have said they will not trade the group’s weapons for reconstruction money, while decrying a US-brokered framework peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts caught up for a few minutes after practice Thursday -- a notable development after the Patriots receiver revealed Wednesday that the former teammates had not spoken since he was traded to New England by the Eagles in June.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said allowing athletes who have signed professional contracts back into college sports "fuels disruption" and should not be allowed, according to an affidavit filed in a Louisiana courthouse last week.
The new deal, which adds two additional years and is pending approval by the OU board of regents, is expected to average more than $10.5 million per season, sources told ESPN. Venables, 55, led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff in 2025 -- the school's first appearance since the 2019 season. Oklahoma went 10-3, losing to Alabama in the CFP.
Dolphins offensive tackle Austin Jackson and Giants right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor were among those to be taken off the field. Jackson and Eluemumor were each replaced for at least a series. Quarterback Jameis Winston was also removed for a couple plays after being in the middle of a scrum.
Free agent James Harden has agreed to a new three-year, $97 million contract to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, with a player option for 2028-29 and a trade kicker, agents Mike Silverman, Troy Payne and Brandon Grier of Equity Sports told ESPN on Thursday.
An active-duty Air Force major who went on cable news and directly accused Donald Trump of violating the Constitution was arrested less than 24 hours later, making that the second time he’s been arrested for upholding his oath. Senate Republicans are quietly panicking that the growing backlash against data centers could cost them a crucial Senate seat in a reliably red state.
Donald Trump was caught on camera this week holding a “cheat sheet” in the Oval Office, the same kind of note card Republicans once said was proof Joe Biden had dementia. Newly surfaced video shows Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sitting almost completely motionless for hours during a Senate vote session just days before he completely vanished from public view.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, U.S., July 31, 2026.
Ask longtime MLB pitcher and current MLB Network host Ryan Dempster a question today at 2 p.m. ET when he joins Chatting Practice Powered by Zoom Events.
Shaw landed on the 10-day Injured List on June 29 with a left-hand sprain that he suffered while fouling off a pitch. Shaw, 24, is hitting .246/.322/.415 (105 OPS+) through 56 games with Chicago this season. He also spent time on the IL earlier in the year with back tightness.
It’s a long season, as they say. And that means a long runway for players looking to find their footing. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not the end of the story of your season.
MLB Pipeline gave a full refresh to its Top 100 Prospects list last week -- and each team’s Top 30 -- now that the 2026 draftees have joined their respective organizations. That makes it as good a time as any to look at the biggest breakout players in Minor Leagues. Some of these players were high Draft picks or on the preseason Top 100 Prospects list.
CHICAGO -- With Dansby Swanson currently on the injured list and sidelined for at least the next month, the Cubs’ depth at shortstop has been thinned at a crucial point in the baseball calendar. On Wednesday, the Cubs made a move to boost the depth chart, claiming utility man Gabriel Arias off waivers from the Mets to add a layer of insurance not only at shortstop, but around the infield.
A los aficionados del béisbol de Chicago puede que no les guste, pero no lo olvidarán. Con los White Sox venciendo a los Cubs 3-0 el miércoles en Wrigley Field, la mejor serie Crosstown de todas terminó en un empate 3-3. Sí, leíste bien, la mejor, desde que el juego entre ligas empezó en las Grandes Ligas en 1997.
Chicago baseball fans might not love it, but they won’t forget it. With the White Sox beating the Cubs 3-0 Wednesday at Wrigley Field, the best Crosstown season series of ’em all ended in a 3-3 deadlock. Yes, you read that correctly — the best, since interleague play began in the major leagues in 1997.
If you had to choose one word to sum up Clay Holmes’ 2026, what would it be? “He’s been disgusting all season, man,” outfielder Tyrone Taylor said. That’s a compliment, by the way.
The overwhelming majority of the guys to play for the Cubs aren’t Chicago born and bred, so excuse them for not seeing the Crosstown series against the White Sox as the biggest three days of the year.
This site is free thanks to our community of supporters. Voluntary donations from readers like you keep our news accessible for everyone. White Sox hold Cubs to two hits, avoid sweep with shutout win in Crosstown series finale.
There are millions of powered wheelchair users in the U.S. today. Assistive Technology Development Inc., or ATDev, aims to use robotics to give these users more independence and freedom in their lives. “I’ve been a power wheelchair user for over 30 years, my whole life really,” Owen Kent, founder and chief marketing officer at ATDev, told The Robot Report.
Off-road physical AI company Agtonomy has expanded its commercial platform with fully autonomous multi-point turning and enhanced passive data collection. The company said this enables farm equipment to execute complex maneuvers in tight headland spaces without human intervention. Agtonomy develops full-autonomy packages that retrofit vehicles from its OEM partners, Kubota and Bobcat.
Today, humanoid robot OEMs are facing one central challenge: How do they bridge the gap between a working prototype and a manufacturable, scalable product? according to Kollmorgen. While software iterates in weeks, motion hardware moves from paper to functional sample in months and to volume production in years. That mismatch—not concept design—is often the real bottleneck.
This week, Unitree Robotics made its debut on Shanghai’s STAR Market, closing its first day 460% higher. The company raised 6.1 billion yuan, around $905 million U.S., with its initial public offering. Unitree said it is the first major legged robotics company to go pubic.
I tasked Claude Fable 5 running in Claude Code for web with the following research task:. Put https://smolmachines.com through its paces as a fast secure sandbox.
My hypothesis is that there is a new opportunity for Extensible Software on the web. LLMs radically lower the cost of authoring extensions, and modern sandbox primitives lower the deployment cost and provide good security boundaries. We can build our app as a solid, accountable core, and allow users to safely extend it in many directions by having LLMs fill in the missing pieces.
Last week I recorded an episode of the Talking Postgres podcast with Claire Giordano on the subject of “How AI is changing software development”. We had a really great conversation. Here are a couple of my highlights from a lightly edited transcript (prompt to Claude: “very minor edits to remove disfluencies”).
Since perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, were discovered in 1934, manufacturers have found new uses and developed a range of chemicals in the family to use in various products such as cookware, food packaging, aerospace components and especially, semiconductors.
Both of Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are separately working toward a combined goal of building out of 100 gigawatts per year of manufactured solar power capacity in the United States, the CEO said at the World Economic Forum at the start of the year. “That’ll probably take us three years or something,” Musk said at the event.
The bill comes at a time when manufacturers in Illinois and the United States as a whole are experiencing an acute worker shortage, despite some evidence that manufacturing jobs are increasing due to reshoring efforts.
Ebm-Papst is headquartered in Mulfingen, Germany, and was established in 1963. The company has more than 13,000 employees worldwide, with operations in about 40 countries including two U.S. sales offices in Connecticut and Tennessee, according to the website. Madison Air has also been one of the Germany-based manufacturer’s longstanding customers, President and CEO Jill Wyant said in a statement.