Morning Digest
35 stories from 9 sources, 215 more held back.
A rare and violent tornado has run rampant through the village of Pomas in southern France, injuring 39 people, including two critically, and damaging around 300 homes, according to the local authorities.
EU buries plan to steal Russian assets for Ukraine – EurActiv. The EU is highly reluctant to revive plans to steal more than $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign reserves and hand them over to cash-strapped Ukraine, EurActiv reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday on the border issue between the two countries and improving relations.
Two UN peacekeepers have been killed and seven people injured after unidentified gunmen ambushed a patrol in South Sudan’s eastern Jonglei State, the UN mission in the country (UNMISS) said on Monday. The patrol was attacked while traveling to Pajut, a remote area in Jonglei, according to the mission. UNMISS deployed a quick reaction force to secure the area and assist with the emergency response.
Armenia’s pro-EU prime minister targets former rival. Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, now a major opposition figurehead, has been detained in a corruption probe, the head of his office has said. Kocharyan and his eldest son Sedrak are reportedly being held amid a series of searches on their properties.
Defense contractors, both primes and subs, should continue to comply with the Department of Defense’s cybersecurity regulation despite Phase 2 being postponed, experts told Manufacturing Dive. The agency temporarily paused phase 2 of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program on July 13.
The Middletown Works facility is considered to be Cleveland-Cliffs’ flagship plant for producing automotive steel, with the capacity to produce 3 million tons of raw steel per year. The project would maintain current production levels while “improving operational reliability, productivity, energy efficiency, and cost competitiveness,” the company said in a news release.
The United States and Canada failed to reach a deal Friday that would have averted 50% levies President Donald Trump promised last month, further souring the trade relationship between two of North America’s largest economies.
Manufacturers are increasingly prioritizing energy procurement — including efficiency, fuel diversity, or other investments — amid an ongoing rise in prices. Few industries have been untouched by this year’s convergence of geopolitical turmoil, an artificial intelligence infrastructure boom and federal policies that have contributed to energy cost increases.
Any player who has declared for the NFL draft and did not withdraw, appeared on an NFL roster or signed a contract with a pro league cannot be on a Big Ten roster, sources told Thamel. The Big Ten's ruling comes in the wake of two NFL players -- Cleveland's Dae'Quan Wright and New Orleans' Zxavian Harris -- parting with their respective teams to join Lane Kiffin's roster at LSU.
Vanderbilt senior Blaze Berlowitz will be the starting quarterback in the Commodores' Week 1 matchup with Austin Peay, sources told ESPN's Pete Thamel on Tuesday.
Eight new squads unveiled their threads for the second edition of the NFL's Rivalries uniform series. The AFC South and NFC North teams will each wear special uniforms for a home game against a division rival. The Indianapolis Colts will be the first team to debut a Rivalries uniform this campaign when they face the Houston Texans in Week 3.
ATLANTA -- The PGA Tour's future postseason will include a Championship Series finale -- a 72-hole, stroke-play tournament that will finalize the points list and determine the seasonlong champion -- followed by the top golfers competing in match play over two weeks in a reimagined Tour Championship.
This article is brought to you by Ollobot. From about 2017, individuals began to truly connect with the initial wave of companion robots. These devices had personality, moved around, joked, and answered when you spoke to them.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
PHOENIX – For the better part of the past four and a half years, Kevin Gausman pitched like a bona fide ace for the Blue Jays. A World Series-tested veteran, the 35-year-old brings both moxie and a nasty fastball/splitter mix to the top of the Cubs’ rotation – both of which he displayed in a dominant outing Monday.
Think back to March, preparing for Opening Day of the 2026 season, and imagine someone told you, “Neither Aaron Judge nor Shohei Ohtani will win MVP this season. That’d be hard to believe, no? Yordan Alvarez still has a stranglehold on AL honors in our latest MVP poll, but for the first time this season, we’ve seen a seismic shakeup in the NL.
The Top 100 Prospects list isn't formulated to pick the players who will perform best in the Minor Leagues. It's a ranking that looks at which players project to have the most success in the Majors. Of course, when tooled-up prospects also happen to put up big numbers, that's worthy of celebration.
Congratulations, at last, to the Brewers who, for the first time all season, are atop these Power Rankings. They’re actually the fourth team to hold the No. 1 spot this year, and the others are, like them, from the National League: The Dodgers (who had been No. 1 for the past two months before this week), the Braves and, for one week back in May, the Cubs.
Humanoid robots and AI are chasing a powerful promise: replacing repetitive manufacturing tasks for lower cost, easing caregiver shortages, taking people out of dangerous work, and helping more of us live better, fuller lives in environments built for humans. That’s important, and it’s coming. On rural farms or urban construction sites, the problem looks different.
Like other global automakers, XPeng Motors is branching into humanoid robots. The electric vehicle manufacturer today said that its Dogotix robotics unit has raised more than $900 million in its initial funding round, bringing its pre-money valuation to $5 billion and post-transaction valuation to more than $6.3 billion.
While a digital twin does not necessarily replace a systems integrator, it can help manufacturers evaluate robots and plan applications, says RoboDK.
The addition of physical AI to the workforce requires more key performance indicators than throughput, according to the president of HireArt.
Donald Trump’s investment portfolio raked in millions in oil and gas stocks while Americans all got gouged at the pump. Trump’s fiercely devoted blonde 35 year-old aide Natalie Harp’s deleted social media posts have come to light, revealing years of over-the-top devotion to the president. In Texas, conservatives are pledging to break with the Republican Party over their support for AI data…
Today, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson sat down with Ellie Leonard of The Panicked Writer Substack and Kait Justice of the Downwind of Truth Substack. Ellie and Kait are two leading independent researchers covering the Jeffrey Epstein saga who have been digging deep into evidence most legacy outlets still haven’t touched.
Former federal officials are revealing that the White House already has a secure nuclear bunker, which undermines Donald Trump’s main argument for his $600 million ballroom. A Pentagon spokesperson just admitted that it keeps a secret blacklist of journalists who ask questions it doesn’t like.
Mary Peltola launches her campaign as a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., January 17, 2026. John here, and this is the Sunday Wrapup. This week, Democrats saw their chances of retaking the Senate — which seemed like a pipe dream just a year ago — significantly improve, all thanks to a handful of Senate races in red states.
PHOENIX – A season ago, Michael Busch was the Cubs’ home-run leader. But after smacking 34 bombs in 2025, the first baseman came into Monday sixth on the roster with just 16 this year. It’s not that he hasn’t been effective – his .352 on-base percentage was the highest of his young major league career – but he hasn’t been the same lineup-carrying presence he was at times last season.
PHOENIX — You might have heard that the Cubs are in a playoff race. While there’s still more than a month of baseball before the postseason begins and the Cubs play their most important games of the year, the games are pretty important already, with the Brewers threatening to pull away in the NL Central and teams like the Phillies and Padres hot on the Cubs’ heels in the wild-card standings.
SEATTLE — Cubs left fielder Ian Happ had a chance to join a mighty exclusive baseball fraternity. Only 13 players in major-league history have hit two grand slams in the same game, and after Happ banged his first off the foul pole in the third inning Sunday, he strolled to the plate with the bases loaded again in the eighth. He drew a walk instead of becoming the newest member of the club.
SEATTLE — The Cubs can be happy they didn’t get swept out of the Pacific Northwest by a sub-.500 Mariners team after winning with a 19-2 rout Sunday.
This release of the Anthropic plugin for LLM mainly provides compatibility with the recently released anthropic v1.0.0 Python library, which switches from httpx to httpx2. OpenAI made the same change in their v3.0.0 release two weeks ago. Anthropic provide this migration guide for upgrading to 1.0, so I prompted Fable 5 in Claude Code with:.
Your executable is a SQLite database (via) Farid Zakaria describes a neat Linux pattern for creating a SQLite database file that can be directly used as an executable binary. The trick sets the SQLite file format's 4-byte application ID (68 bytes into the file) to SELF, standing for Structured Executable & Linkable Format.
Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive (via) A few interesting numbers in this FT story gathered from "people with knowledge of the matter":. This article also introduced me to the Ramp AI index, which uses billing data from 70,000 Ramp credit card using companies to estimate model adoption.
Prior to Fable, it felt silly to waste too much time improving your coding harness or context strategies. A new model would arrive at the same price (or cheaper!) and paper over most of your problems. It was (and still is!) incredible.
A rare and violent tornado has run rampant through the village of Pomas in southern France, injuring 39 people, including two critically, and damaging around 300 homes, according to the local authorities.
EU buries plan to steal Russian assets for Ukraine – EurActiv. The EU is highly reluctant to revive plans to steal more than $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign reserves and hand them over to cash-strapped Ukraine, EurActiv reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday on the border issue between the two countries and improving relations.
Two UN peacekeepers have been killed and seven people injured after unidentified gunmen ambushed a patrol in South Sudan’s eastern Jonglei State, the UN mission in the country (UNMISS) said on Monday. The patrol was attacked while traveling to Pajut, a remote area in Jonglei, according to the mission. UNMISS deployed a quick reaction force to secure the area and assist with the emergency response.
Armenia’s pro-EU prime minister targets former rival. Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, now a major opposition figurehead, has been detained in a corruption probe, the head of his office has said. Kocharyan and his eldest son Sedrak are reportedly being held amid a series of searches on their properties.
Any player who has declared for the NFL draft and did not withdraw, appeared on an NFL roster or signed a contract with a pro league cannot be on a Big Ten roster, sources told Thamel. The Big Ten's ruling comes in the wake of two NFL players -- Cleveland's Dae'Quan Wright and New Orleans' Zxavian Harris -- parting with their respective teams to join Lane Kiffin's roster at LSU.
Vanderbilt senior Blaze Berlowitz will be the starting quarterback in the Commodores' Week 1 matchup with Austin Peay, sources told ESPN's Pete Thamel on Tuesday.
Eight new squads unveiled their threads for the second edition of the NFL's Rivalries uniform series. The AFC South and NFC North teams will each wear special uniforms for a home game against a division rival. The Indianapolis Colts will be the first team to debut a Rivalries uniform this campaign when they face the Houston Texans in Week 3.
ATLANTA -- The PGA Tour's future postseason will include a Championship Series finale -- a 72-hole, stroke-play tournament that will finalize the points list and determine the seasonlong champion -- followed by the top golfers competing in match play over two weeks in a reimagined Tour Championship.
Donald Trump’s investment portfolio raked in millions in oil and gas stocks while Americans all got gouged at the pump. Trump’s fiercely devoted blonde 35 year-old aide Natalie Harp’s deleted social media posts have come to light, revealing years of over-the-top devotion to the president. In Texas, conservatives are pledging to break with the Republican Party over their support for AI data…
Today, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson sat down with Ellie Leonard of The Panicked Writer Substack and Kait Justice of the Downwind of Truth Substack. Ellie and Kait are two leading independent researchers covering the Jeffrey Epstein saga who have been digging deep into evidence most legacy outlets still haven’t touched.
Former federal officials are revealing that the White House already has a secure nuclear bunker, which undermines Donald Trump’s main argument for his $600 million ballroom. A Pentagon spokesperson just admitted that it keeps a secret blacklist of journalists who ask questions it doesn’t like.
Mary Peltola launches her campaign as a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., January 17, 2026. John here, and this is the Sunday Wrapup. This week, Democrats saw their chances of retaking the Senate — which seemed like a pipe dream just a year ago — significantly improve, all thanks to a handful of Senate races in red states.
PHOENIX – For the better part of the past four and a half years, Kevin Gausman pitched like a bona fide ace for the Blue Jays. A World Series-tested veteran, the 35-year-old brings both moxie and a nasty fastball/splitter mix to the top of the Cubs’ rotation – both of which he displayed in a dominant outing Monday.
Think back to March, preparing for Opening Day of the 2026 season, and imagine someone told you, “Neither Aaron Judge nor Shohei Ohtani will win MVP this season. That’d be hard to believe, no? Yordan Alvarez still has a stranglehold on AL honors in our latest MVP poll, but for the first time this season, we’ve seen a seismic shakeup in the NL.
The Top 100 Prospects list isn't formulated to pick the players who will perform best in the Minor Leagues. It's a ranking that looks at which players project to have the most success in the Majors. Of course, when tooled-up prospects also happen to put up big numbers, that's worthy of celebration.
Congratulations, at last, to the Brewers who, for the first time all season, are atop these Power Rankings. They’re actually the fourth team to hold the No. 1 spot this year, and the others are, like them, from the National League: The Dodgers (who had been No. 1 for the past two months before this week), the Braves and, for one week back in May, the Cubs.
PHOENIX – A season ago, Michael Busch was the Cubs’ home-run leader. But after smacking 34 bombs in 2025, the first baseman came into Monday sixth on the roster with just 16 this year. It’s not that he hasn’t been effective – his .352 on-base percentage was the highest of his young major league career – but he hasn’t been the same lineup-carrying presence he was at times last season.
PHOENIX — You might have heard that the Cubs are in a playoff race. While there’s still more than a month of baseball before the postseason begins and the Cubs play their most important games of the year, the games are pretty important already, with the Brewers threatening to pull away in the NL Central and teams like the Phillies and Padres hot on the Cubs’ heels in the wild-card standings.
SEATTLE — Cubs left fielder Ian Happ had a chance to join a mighty exclusive baseball fraternity. Only 13 players in major-league history have hit two grand slams in the same game, and after Happ banged his first off the foul pole in the third inning Sunday, he strolled to the plate with the bases loaded again in the eighth. He drew a walk instead of becoming the newest member of the club.
SEATTLE — The Cubs can be happy they didn’t get swept out of the Pacific Northwest by a sub-.500 Mariners team after winning with a 19-2 rout Sunday.
Humanoid robots and AI are chasing a powerful promise: replacing repetitive manufacturing tasks for lower cost, easing caregiver shortages, taking people out of dangerous work, and helping more of us live better, fuller lives in environments built for humans. That’s important, and it’s coming. On rural farms or urban construction sites, the problem looks different.
Like other global automakers, XPeng Motors is branching into humanoid robots. The electric vehicle manufacturer today said that its Dogotix robotics unit has raised more than $900 million in its initial funding round, bringing its pre-money valuation to $5 billion and post-transaction valuation to more than $6.3 billion.
While a digital twin does not necessarily replace a systems integrator, it can help manufacturers evaluate robots and plan applications, says RoboDK.
The addition of physical AI to the workforce requires more key performance indicators than throughput, according to the president of HireArt.
This article is brought to you by Ollobot. From about 2017, individuals began to truly connect with the initial wave of companion robots. These devices had personality, moved around, joked, and answered when you spoke to them.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
This release of the Anthropic plugin for LLM mainly provides compatibility with the recently released anthropic v1.0.0 Python library, which switches from httpx to httpx2. OpenAI made the same change in their v3.0.0 release two weeks ago. Anthropic provide this migration guide for upgrading to 1.0, so I prompted Fable 5 in Claude Code with:.
Your executable is a SQLite database (via) Farid Zakaria describes a neat Linux pattern for creating a SQLite database file that can be directly used as an executable binary. The trick sets the SQLite file format's 4-byte application ID (68 bytes into the file) to SELF, standing for Structured Executable & Linkable Format.
Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive (via) A few interesting numbers in this FT story gathered from "people with knowledge of the matter":. This article also introduced me to the Ramp AI index, which uses billing data from 70,000 Ramp credit card using companies to estimate model adoption.
Prior to Fable, it felt silly to waste too much time improving your coding harness or context strategies. A new model would arrive at the same price (or cheaper!) and paper over most of your problems. It was (and still is!) incredible.
Defense contractors, both primes and subs, should continue to comply with the Department of Defense’s cybersecurity regulation despite Phase 2 being postponed, experts told Manufacturing Dive. The agency temporarily paused phase 2 of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program on July 13.
The Middletown Works facility is considered to be Cleveland-Cliffs’ flagship plant for producing automotive steel, with the capacity to produce 3 million tons of raw steel per year. The project would maintain current production levels while “improving operational reliability, productivity, energy efficiency, and cost competitiveness,” the company said in a news release.
The United States and Canada failed to reach a deal Friday that would have averted 50% levies President Donald Trump promised last month, further souring the trade relationship between two of North America’s largest economies.
Manufacturers are increasingly prioritizing energy procurement — including efficiency, fuel diversity, or other investments — amid an ongoing rise in prices. Few industries have been untouched by this year’s convergence of geopolitical turmoil, an artificial intelligence infrastructure boom and federal policies that have contributed to energy cost increases.