Morning Digest
35 stories from 9 sources, 109 more held back.
Despite the conspicuous difference in size, speed, and strength between the sexes, a debate is now raging in women’s professional basketball in the United States whether to let men compete alongside the ladies. Nobody would ever confuse Royce White, 35, with a woman. The man with stands 6 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 260 pounds (118 kg), sports a bushy beard, and is bald.
The planned transfer of US-made missiles and other weapons from Türkiye to Ukraine will “inevitably undermine mutual trust” with both Washington and Ankara, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. The US State Department notified Congress earlier this month that it was prepared to authorize the re-export of weapons from Turkish stocks to Ukraine.
Iran mocks Trump’s Hormuz ambitions as ‘fanciful delusions’. The Strait of Hormuz will remain under Tehran’s control, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has said, calling on Washington to “stop indulging in delusions. The statement comes in response to President Donald Trump saying he would soon declare the sea passage a “territory of the US.”
‘No longer small dreams’: Modi’s message to India on Independence Day (VIDEO). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday outlined the country’s achievements and priorities for future growth as the world’s largest democracy marked its 80th Independence Day.
Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club. David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN.
Donald Trump is now telling families of sailors trapped on an aircraft carrier with reportedly horrid conditions that their deployment hasn’t gone on “nearly long enough. He also bragged to a crowd that “beautiful young girls” can’t stop fawning over him at the White House.
Hunter Biden recently joined Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson, where the second son of the 46th president of the United States sounded off on President Donald Trump’s corruption, the fight over holding Trump officials accountable under a future Democratic administration, the future of the Democratic Party, his views on the war in Gaza and his own recovery from addiction, among other topics.
His administration is destroying one of the paper trails investigators need to follow secret money…. U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. Trump just took steps to make it very difficult to prosecute money laundering, a crime he and his real estate buddies may well have been committing much of their felonious…
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Cardinals rookie running back Jeremiyah Love will miss the next week to let a sore ankle that he injured in Thursday night's preseason game against the Las Vegas Raiders heal, coach Mike LaFleur said Saturday. Love was more sore Friday than he was Thursday, said LaFleur, who added that Love was "more sore than we were anticipating."
Three-time Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon and the Seattle Seahawks have reached an agreement on a four-year, $132 million extension, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter on Saturday. The deal includes over $101 million in guaranteed money, sources said, and makes him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.
Ohio State lined up at Miami's 22-yard line, poised to answer the Hurricanes' first score with one of its own in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup at the Cotton Bowl. A 59-yard Jeremiah Smith reception -- his longest against an FBS opponent all season -- had moved Ohio State into the red zone. Even after a sack, the Buckeyes were well within scoring range.
Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen led his position with 364.62 fantasy points last season, and for six consecutive years, he has finished among the game's top two scorers at quarterback. However, quarterback is a deep position in 2026. One can make the case that nearly half the NFL teams have a QB worthy of starting for your fantasy team this season.
At recent major tech events, humanoid robots were everywhere. Some of them walked, navigated, and manipulated objects with a level of dexterity that would have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago. And yet, despite all of this progress, I find myself consistently underwhelmed when I try to communicate with them at Treble.
Marc Kermisch is the chief technology and AI officer at Protolabs. He leads the Maple Plain, Minn.-based company‘s global technology organization, overseeing its software product development, digital manufacturing platform evolution, and enterprise-wide artificial intelligence and research & development strategies.
Neros Inc. this week announced it raised $250 million in a Series C round. This brought the drone defense contractor to a $2.5 billion valuation. “This newest round of funding accelerates Neros into a multi-capability drone manufacturer,” stated Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros.
On June 24, Agility Robotics Inc., a leading humanoid robotics and physical AI company, announced it had entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The deal values Agility at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity valuation.
Morris is a local celebrity: the only known Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) in the entire Pacific Ocean. He showed up in the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco 14 years ago.
I still have quite a bit of older content on my blog that I never got round to tagging. My blog has 1,856 tags - likely too many to feed to an LLM in one go and say "which of these tags match the following content". Doug Turnbull has a neat solution.
Fixes a crashing bug in sqlite-utils 4.2. I'd introduced code that looks like this:. from typing_extensions import Self.
Lots of improvements in this one relating to the table.transform() feature, which adds support for complex alter table operations by creating a fresh table, copying across the data and then dropping and replacing the old one. transform() now preserves a much larger array of edge-case schema definitions, including check constraints, unique constraints and even comments describing the columns.
CHICAGO – Clay Holmes has pitched on some of baseball’s biggest stages. He has handled high-leverage outs in the World Series. He has made a pair of All-Star teams.
CHICAGO -- As Clay Holmes walked off the mound on Friday afternoon, he was greeted with a standing ovation from the Cubs fans getting their first look at the pitcher at Wrigley Field. Holmes raised his glove in appreciation of the well-earned reception.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs have to make a decision soon about how to reorganize their rotation. For now, the only decision the North Siders are ready to reveal is the plan to have righty Edward Cabrera rejoin the starting corps for an outing on Sunday against the Cardinals.
WASHINGTON -- Both Josiah Hartshorn and Owen Ayers made strong impressions in their limited exposure to the Cubs’ big league team during Spring Training games. When the Minor League season arrived, the pair of prospects developed into two of the system’s breakout stars.
“No one performs an experiment once and considers the work done. They repeat it with different variables, correcting what they thought they knew, adding what they’ve learned.”
Manager Craig Counsell made the announcement after Cabrera threw a bullpen session before the Cubs’ 3-0 victory Friday. Left-hander Shota Imanaga, who had been slated to start Sunday against the Cardinals’ Hunter Dobbins, will pitch the opener of the Cubs’ three-game set Monday against the White Sox at Wrigley Field. Cabrera is 5-4 with a 5.10 ERA in 14 starts in his first season with the Cubs.
Cubs newcomer Clay Holmes and his sinker were back in form. Holmes was dominant in his second start with the Cubs and in his home debut at Wrigley Field, tossing one-hit ball into the seventh inning and leading the North Siders past the Cardinals 3-0 on Friday.
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.
Objects constructed by robots are ubiquitous. If you’ve used a car, household appliance, or smartphone today, you’ve used an object constructed at least in part by robots. The more products that manufacturers want to produce (and consumers want to consume) at lower costs, the more industrial robots will be needed.
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.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security.
Trump’s proclamation also orders Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish an onshoring incentive program for entities investing in manufacturing drones and their components. China’s drone market, projected to reach a $15.6 billion value in 2025, has the largest global presence and the “deepest component supply chain,” according to research firm Drone Intelligence.
Ford and Changan Automobile launched the Changan-Ford JV in 2012. The JV produces both Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles for the China market. The JV factory in Hangzhou, which opened in 2015, currently builds the Lincoln Nautilus, Aviator and Ford Explorer and Edge L SUVs, according to Ford’s website.
A Department of Defense’s multimillion-dollar contract has brought a metal casting competition to the worldwide stage as reality show competition in an effort to spread awareness of the skill trade and inspire a new workforce.
Veolia filed a lawsuit Tuesday against current or former manufacturers at six sites upstream of its drinking water plant in Wilmington, Delaware, alleging they contaminated water with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Despite the conspicuous difference in size, speed, and strength between the sexes, a debate is now raging in women’s professional basketball in the United States whether to let men compete alongside the ladies. Nobody would ever confuse Royce White, 35, with a woman. The man with stands 6 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 260 pounds (118 kg), sports a bushy beard, and is bald.
The planned transfer of US-made missiles and other weapons from Türkiye to Ukraine will “inevitably undermine mutual trust” with both Washington and Ankara, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. The US State Department notified Congress earlier this month that it was prepared to authorize the re-export of weapons from Turkish stocks to Ukraine.
Iran mocks Trump’s Hormuz ambitions as ‘fanciful delusions’. The Strait of Hormuz will remain under Tehran’s control, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has said, calling on Washington to “stop indulging in delusions. The statement comes in response to President Donald Trump saying he would soon declare the sea passage a “territory of the US.”
‘No longer small dreams’: Modi’s message to India on Independence Day (VIDEO). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday outlined the country’s achievements and priorities for future growth as the world’s largest democracy marked its 80th Independence Day.
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Cardinals rookie running back Jeremiyah Love will miss the next week to let a sore ankle that he injured in Thursday night's preseason game against the Las Vegas Raiders heal, coach Mike LaFleur said Saturday. Love was more sore Friday than he was Thursday, said LaFleur, who added that Love was "more sore than we were anticipating."
Three-time Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon and the Seattle Seahawks have reached an agreement on a four-year, $132 million extension, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter on Saturday. The deal includes over $101 million in guaranteed money, sources said, and makes him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.
Ohio State lined up at Miami's 22-yard line, poised to answer the Hurricanes' first score with one of its own in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup at the Cotton Bowl. A 59-yard Jeremiah Smith reception -- his longest against an FBS opponent all season -- had moved Ohio State into the red zone. Even after a sack, the Buckeyes were well within scoring range.
Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen led his position with 364.62 fantasy points last season, and for six consecutive years, he has finished among the game's top two scorers at quarterback. However, quarterback is a deep position in 2026. One can make the case that nearly half the NFL teams have a QB worthy of starting for your fantasy team this season.
Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club. David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN.
Donald Trump is now telling families of sailors trapped on an aircraft carrier with reportedly horrid conditions that their deployment hasn’t gone on “nearly long enough. He also bragged to a crowd that “beautiful young girls” can’t stop fawning over him at the White House.
Hunter Biden recently joined Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson, where the second son of the 46th president of the United States sounded off on President Donald Trump’s corruption, the fight over holding Trump officials accountable under a future Democratic administration, the future of the Democratic Party, his views on the war in Gaza and his own recovery from addiction, among other topics.
His administration is destroying one of the paper trails investigators need to follow secret money…. U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. Trump just took steps to make it very difficult to prosecute money laundering, a crime he and his real estate buddies may well have been committing much of their felonious…
CHICAGO – Clay Holmes has pitched on some of baseball’s biggest stages. He has handled high-leverage outs in the World Series. He has made a pair of All-Star teams.
CHICAGO -- As Clay Holmes walked off the mound on Friday afternoon, he was greeted with a standing ovation from the Cubs fans getting their first look at the pitcher at Wrigley Field. Holmes raised his glove in appreciation of the well-earned reception.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs have to make a decision soon about how to reorganize their rotation. For now, the only decision the North Siders are ready to reveal is the plan to have righty Edward Cabrera rejoin the starting corps for an outing on Sunday against the Cardinals.
WASHINGTON -- Both Josiah Hartshorn and Owen Ayers made strong impressions in their limited exposure to the Cubs’ big league team during Spring Training games. When the Minor League season arrived, the pair of prospects developed into two of the system’s breakout stars.
“No one performs an experiment once and considers the work done. They repeat it with different variables, correcting what they thought they knew, adding what they’ve learned.”
Manager Craig Counsell made the announcement after Cabrera threw a bullpen session before the Cubs’ 3-0 victory Friday. Left-hander Shota Imanaga, who had been slated to start Sunday against the Cardinals’ Hunter Dobbins, will pitch the opener of the Cubs’ three-game set Monday against the White Sox at Wrigley Field. Cabrera is 5-4 with a 5.10 ERA in 14 starts in his first season with the Cubs.
Cubs newcomer Clay Holmes and his sinker were back in form. Holmes was dominant in his second start with the Cubs and in his home debut at Wrigley Field, tossing one-hit ball into the seventh inning and leading the North Siders past the Cardinals 3-0 on Friday.
At recent major tech events, humanoid robots were everywhere. Some of them walked, navigated, and manipulated objects with a level of dexterity that would have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago. And yet, despite all of this progress, I find myself consistently underwhelmed when I try to communicate with them at Treble.
Marc Kermisch is the chief technology and AI officer at Protolabs. He leads the Maple Plain, Minn.-based company‘s global technology organization, overseeing its software product development, digital manufacturing platform evolution, and enterprise-wide artificial intelligence and research & development strategies.
Neros Inc. this week announced it raised $250 million in a Series C round. This brought the drone defense contractor to a $2.5 billion valuation. “This newest round of funding accelerates Neros into a multi-capability drone manufacturer,” stated Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros.
On June 24, Agility Robotics Inc., a leading humanoid robotics and physical AI company, announced it had entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The deal values Agility at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity valuation.
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.
Objects constructed by robots are ubiquitous. If you’ve used a car, household appliance, or smartphone today, you’ve used an object constructed at least in part by robots. The more products that manufacturers want to produce (and consumers want to consume) at lower costs, the more industrial robots will be needed.
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.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security.
Morris is a local celebrity: the only known Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) in the entire Pacific Ocean. He showed up in the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco 14 years ago.
I still have quite a bit of older content on my blog that I never got round to tagging. My blog has 1,856 tags - likely too many to feed to an LLM in one go and say "which of these tags match the following content". Doug Turnbull has a neat solution.
Fixes a crashing bug in sqlite-utils 4.2. I'd introduced code that looks like this:. from typing_extensions import Self.
Lots of improvements in this one relating to the table.transform() feature, which adds support for complex alter table operations by creating a fresh table, copying across the data and then dropping and replacing the old one. transform() now preserves a much larger array of edge-case schema definitions, including check constraints, unique constraints and even comments describing the columns.
Trump’s proclamation also orders Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish an onshoring incentive program for entities investing in manufacturing drones and their components. China’s drone market, projected to reach a $15.6 billion value in 2025, has the largest global presence and the “deepest component supply chain,” according to research firm Drone Intelligence.
Ford and Changan Automobile launched the Changan-Ford JV in 2012. The JV produces both Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles for the China market. The JV factory in Hangzhou, which opened in 2015, currently builds the Lincoln Nautilus, Aviator and Ford Explorer and Edge L SUVs, according to Ford’s website.
A Department of Defense’s multimillion-dollar contract has brought a metal casting competition to the worldwide stage as reality show competition in an effort to spread awareness of the skill trade and inspire a new workforce.
Veolia filed a lawsuit Tuesday against current or former manufacturers at six sites upstream of its drinking water plant in Wilmington, Delaware, alleging they contaminated water with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.