Morning Digest
35 stories from 8 sources, 58 more held back.
A former senior official who worked under US Covid czar Anthony Fauci has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hide government records concerning coronavirus research and the origins of the pandemic. David Morens served as a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci headed, between 2006 and 2022.
US President Donald Trump has vowed to target any country helping Iran’s economy, shifting from his previous focus on military threats. Trump made the remarks after a 60-day window to negotiate a peace deal with Tehran expired on Monday without breakthroughs. “I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!
A biological male who identifies as a woman was sentenced on Tuesday to six years and one month in prison after pleading guilty to plotting to kill US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Ryan Michael English, who goes by Raleigh Jane English, turned herself in to a police officer outside the Capitol building on January 27, 2025.
On August 18, a federal trial opened in the US, organized by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general against Meta. Twenty-nine states brought the lawsuit – represented by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey at the trial.
US President Donald Trump has said he expects to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, days after ordering joint military drills with South Korea scaled back over what he called their ‘hostile’ signal to Pyongyang. During his first presidency, Trump and Kim sought to improve relations between the two countries, meeting three times, including at the Demilitarized Zone in 2019.
Has Serbia withdrawn its support for Russia? Leaving aside Belarus, which is geographically European but rarely treated as part of Europe’s political mainstream, most people would probably name Serbia, which, in geopolitical terms is a remarkable exception.
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”).
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.
CHICAGO -- The crowd inside Wrigley Field roared as the baseball that left Alex Bregman’s bat in the seventh inning on Wednesday afternoon carried high over left field. It seemed destined for the bleachers, but this was one of those days when the wind can transform the old ballpark into a hitter’s nightmare.
CHICAGO -- Cade Townsend had been to Wrigley Field a handful of times when he was a kid. He remembers coming to games with his family a decade ago -- getting a chance to see the 2016 champions in person -- and has photos of himself wearing Cubs gear in the stands at the Friendly Confines. “And now I’m sitting in the dugout,” Townsend said on Wednesday morning.
CHICAGO -- When Alex Bregman signed a long-term contract with the Cubs in January, the goal was to help the organization return to the October stage and push for its first World Series triumph in a decade. The veteran third baseman also has work he wants to do off the diamond.
Bregman walks it off for the Cubs | Morning Lineup.
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.
A new book claims Trump White House staffer Natalie Harp was perhaps the biggest driving force behind the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, which houses the First Lady’s office. New FCC documents show Chairman Brendan Carr has been in constant contact with right-wing media executives and White House officials while refusing to discuss any of it in public.
Major NBA moves have already gone down this offseason, none bigger than the late-night blockbuster that ended a year-long Giannis Antetokounmpo trade saga. The Milwaukee Bucks finally dealt the two-time MVP to the Miami Heat for four players, four first-round picks and a pick swap.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The hold-in for Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea ended on Wednesday when the team announced it had agreed to terms on a contract extension with the two-time Pro Bowl player.
As part of the multiteam deal, Denver will receive an unprotected 2031 Cavs first-round pick and a 2032 Sacramento Kings second-rounder, according to sources. Watson will sign a new four-year, $88 million deal with a player option and trade kicker to join the Cavaliers, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul and agents Lucas Newton and Calvin Andrews told ESPN.
On Wednesday, Nick Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up and former world No. 13, announced he had tested positive for cocaine in a drug test earlier this summer and had been given a provisional suspension. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the results and the suspension shortly after.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The hold in for Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea has ended, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter. Vea and his agent, Collin Roberts, reached an agreement with the Bucs on a one-year extension that sources said adds $6 million to the $18 million he was already set to make in 2026 for $24 million, plus an additional $24 million in 2027.
WESTFIELD, Ind. -- CEO Scott O'Neil is confident that LIV Golf will continue as it attempts to remake itself amid present financial hurdles and no funding from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia beyond this season. He also expressed a desire for the forthcoming version of LIV to be accepted into the larger golf ecosystem.
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.
Serve Robotics Inc., a developer of sidewalk delivery robots, this week announced a partnership with Grubhub, a subsidiary of Wonder. Serve will now be offering robotic deliveries on the Grubhub marketplace starting in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Alexandria, Va.
With pallet pickup cycles as fast as 20 seconds, Pudu Robotics yesterday unveiled the MP2000, an AI-powered autonomous pallet handler built to tackle high-frequency, heavy-payload transport in crowded manufacturing and logistics hubs.
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.
Un hombre fue arrestado y acusado de golpear a un aficionado en el juego del Clásico Crosstown del lunes por la noche en Wrigley Field, donde los Cubs vencieron a los White Sox 7-5 en entradas extras.
The project, slated for Generation Park in Houston, is part of Bristol Myers Squibb’s larger plan to invest $40 billion in the United States through 2030 across research and development, technology and domestic manufacturing. The company said it designed the Houston campus to be modular and multimodal, allowing for flexibility as demand shifts to certain medicines over others.
Many regions across the world have physical premiums over the global benchmark price of aluminum. Despite its name, the Midwest Premium functions as the nationwide premium for aluminum in the U.S. market. Premiums are broadly viewed as surcharges to account for factors including regional transportation costs and tariffs.
A former senior official who worked under US Covid czar Anthony Fauci has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hide government records concerning coronavirus research and the origins of the pandemic. David Morens served as a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci headed, between 2006 and 2022.
US President Donald Trump has vowed to target any country helping Iran’s economy, shifting from his previous focus on military threats. Trump made the remarks after a 60-day window to negotiate a peace deal with Tehran expired on Monday without breakthroughs. “I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!
A biological male who identifies as a woman was sentenced on Tuesday to six years and one month in prison after pleading guilty to plotting to kill US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Ryan Michael English, who goes by Raleigh Jane English, turned herself in to a police officer outside the Capitol building on January 27, 2025.
On August 18, a federal trial opened in the US, organized by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general against Meta. Twenty-nine states brought the lawsuit – represented by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey at the trial.
US President Donald Trump has said he expects to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, days after ordering joint military drills with South Korea scaled back over what he called their ‘hostile’ signal to Pyongyang. During his first presidency, Trump and Kim sought to improve relations between the two countries, meeting three times, including at the Demilitarized Zone in 2019.
Has Serbia withdrawn its support for Russia? Leaving aside Belarus, which is geographically European but rarely treated as part of Europe’s political mainstream, most people would probably name Serbia, which, in geopolitical terms is a remarkable exception.
Major NBA moves have already gone down this offseason, none bigger than the late-night blockbuster that ended a year-long Giannis Antetokounmpo trade saga. The Milwaukee Bucks finally dealt the two-time MVP to the Miami Heat for four players, four first-round picks and a pick swap.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The hold-in for Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea ended on Wednesday when the team announced it had agreed to terms on a contract extension with the two-time Pro Bowl player.
As part of the multiteam deal, Denver will receive an unprotected 2031 Cavs first-round pick and a 2032 Sacramento Kings second-rounder, according to sources. Watson will sign a new four-year, $88 million deal with a player option and trade kicker to join the Cavaliers, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul and agents Lucas Newton and Calvin Andrews told ESPN.
On Wednesday, Nick Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up and former world No. 13, announced he had tested positive for cocaine in a drug test earlier this summer and had been given a provisional suspension. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the results and the suspension shortly after.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The hold in for Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea has ended, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter. Vea and his agent, Collin Roberts, reached an agreement with the Bucs on a one-year extension that sources said adds $6 million to the $18 million he was already set to make in 2026 for $24 million, plus an additional $24 million in 2027.
WESTFIELD, Ind. -- CEO Scott O'Neil is confident that LIV Golf will continue as it attempts to remake itself amid present financial hurdles and no funding from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia beyond this season. He also expressed a desire for the forthcoming version of LIV to be accepted into the larger golf ecosystem.
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.
A new book claims Trump White House staffer Natalie Harp was perhaps the biggest driving force behind the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, which houses the First Lady’s office. New FCC documents show Chairman Brendan Carr has been in constant contact with right-wing media executives and White House officials while refusing to discuss any of it in public.
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.
CHICAGO -- The crowd inside Wrigley Field roared as the baseball that left Alex Bregman’s bat in the seventh inning on Wednesday afternoon carried high over left field. It seemed destined for the bleachers, but this was one of those days when the wind can transform the old ballpark into a hitter’s nightmare.
CHICAGO -- Cade Townsend had been to Wrigley Field a handful of times when he was a kid. He remembers coming to games with his family a decade ago -- getting a chance to see the 2016 champions in person -- and has photos of himself wearing Cubs gear in the stands at the Friendly Confines. “And now I’m sitting in the dugout,” Townsend said on Wednesday morning.
CHICAGO -- When Alex Bregman signed a long-term contract with the Cubs in January, the goal was to help the organization return to the October stage and push for its first World Series triumph in a decade. The veteran third baseman also has work he wants to do off the diamond.
Bregman walks it off for the Cubs | Morning Lineup.
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.
Un hombre fue arrestado y acusado de golpear a un aficionado en el juego del Clásico Crosstown del lunes por la noche en Wrigley Field, donde los Cubs vencieron a los White Sox 7-5 en entradas extras.
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.
Serve Robotics Inc., a developer of sidewalk delivery robots, this week announced a partnership with Grubhub, a subsidiary of Wonder. Serve will now be offering robotic deliveries on the Grubhub marketplace starting in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Alexandria, Va.
With pallet pickup cycles as fast as 20 seconds, Pudu Robotics yesterday unveiled the MP2000, an AI-powered autonomous pallet handler built to tackle high-frequency, heavy-payload transport in crowded manufacturing and logistics hubs.
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”).
The project, slated for Generation Park in Houston, is part of Bristol Myers Squibb’s larger plan to invest $40 billion in the United States through 2030 across research and development, technology and domestic manufacturing. The company said it designed the Houston campus to be modular and multimodal, allowing for flexibility as demand shifts to certain medicines over others.
Many regions across the world have physical premiums over the global benchmark price of aluminum. Despite its name, the Midwest Premium functions as the nationwide premium for aluminum in the U.S. market. Premiums are broadly viewed as surcharges to account for factors including regional transportation costs and tariffs.