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Parasitic infections likely linked to farming practices, not restaurants

Two state experts break down the mysteries around a complicated foodborne infection, Cyclosporiasis, that’s been gaining traction in North Carolina and across the nation.

Jul 21 • 4:39 AM EDT • Health • northcarolinahealthnews.org

Biggest Questions Facing Wisconsin Football Before Fall Camp

What are the most pressing topics entering camp as Luke Fickell looks to turn it around in year four?

Jul 20 • 8:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Mamdani doubles down on comments to arrest Netanyahu

Social Preview text goes here.

Jul 20 • 7:27 PM EDT • Politics • ny1.com

Phillies actively looking to trade for back-end starting pitcher

The Phillies are looking to trade for a starting pitcher. If they can’t make a deal before Saturday, they could bring up Brian Keller from Triple A.

Jul 20 • 6:57 PM EDT • Sports • nbcsportsphiladelphia.com

UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.

Jul 20 • 6:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

Steelers Backup QB Battle Makes Four-Quarterback Roster Idea Unlikely

One of the battles on display in Latrobe for the Pittsburgh Steelers will be the competition for the backup quarterback job. Mason Rudolph and Will Howard will compete for the role, with the loser likely receiving a ticket out of Pittsburgh, unless the Steelers decide to get creative and find a way to keep all of them. One local beat writer proposed that idea, and it’s something the Steelers have done before.

Jul 20 • 5:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Apple Watch Series 12 Coming in September With These New Features

With the Apple Watch Series 12 now just two months away, we have created a recap of rumored new features, with some more likely than others. Below, we have outlined everything rumored so far for the Apple Watch Series 12. More Likely New Chip After One-Year Hiatus While the Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch SE 3 all contain the same S10 chip as the previous year's models, leaked Apple code showed the Apple Watch Series 12 will get a new chip.

Jul 20 • 4:00 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Texas football’s new indoor practice facility near completion

Texas football has a lot to look forward to. Not only does the program have one to two additional years of Arch Manning working under center, head coach Steve Sarkisian is also locked in for the long-haul thanks to a contract that likely keeps him at Texas until at least 2031. And for the next […]

Jul 20 • 2:59 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

iOS 27 beta 4 mentions new iPhone model with multi-battery feature

iOS 27 beta 4 arrived today, and per Macworld it includes code references to what’s likely a new iPhone Ultra feature: dual batteries.

Jul 20 • 2:43 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com

Troy Jackson emerges as likely Senate pick for Maine Democrats

Former Maine lawmaker and logger Troy Jackson is set to become the state's Democratic Senate nominee after Graham Platner's exit.

Jul 20 • 2:00 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

3 storylines for Alabama football entering 2026 SEC media days

Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is likely to speak on a variety of topics at 2026 SEC media days, most notably the Crimson Tide's quarterback battle.

Jul 20 • 12:40 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com

Almost Half of Americans View SCOTUS as Political

Plus, Trump’s ban on transgender troops will likely return to the Supreme Court.

Jul 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • scotusblog.com

The Wingman

Mark Kelly’s résumé and the goodwill he’s accrued as Gabby Giffords’s spouse have granted him a high level of admiration. Can it translate to excitement for a presidential campaign?

Jul 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • theatlantic.com

She retired early to slow travel; participation helped her feel at home

While slow traveling the world, Kelly Benthall thought staying in a country longer would help her feel like part of a community. A party in Bali changed her perspective.

Jul 19 • 8:14 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Do You Have to Be Fancy to Get Published in “Science”?

No, not necessarily. But scientists who work for a prestigious university are three times more likely than their peers who don’t to get published in the top-tier journal, according to a new independent analysis of Science’s manuscript data.

Jul 19 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • insidehighered.com

Broncos Worth Likely To Soar After Seahawks Sale

The Denver Broncos value will grow quite a bit based on the Seattle Seahawks selling for $9.6 billion.

Jul 19 • 4:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

De Paula's Breakout Season Strengthens Case as Dodgers' Untouchable

Josue De Paula's latest clutch home run continued a remarkable season that has likely cemented his status as one of the Los Angeles Dodgers' few untouchable prospects.

Jul 19 • 1:18 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

What We're Expecting at Samsung's July Galaxy Unpacked 2026

The new shorter and wider, book-style foldable is likely to steal the show.

Jul 19 • 8:45 AM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com

Poll: Favorite World Cup Fans

After Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and Spain, it’s likely that soccer will go back to being a secondary sport here in the United States. Sure, there will be excitement in 2027 for the Women’s World Cup, but that’s happening in Brazil. There will be coverage of the U.S. women’s team, but not nearly as much interest in games not involving the USWNT.

Jul 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Cells from your mother likely infiltrated your brain in the womb, and they could survive for decades, study reveals

Maternal cells that infiltrate children's brains during pregnancy take on different jobs in the brain and may persist into old age.

Jul 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com

Arsenal's World Cup finalists

It's European versus world champions in Sunday's World Cup final and Arsenal have three players in Luis de la Fuente's Spain side who face Argentina live on the BBC from 19:00 BST. Mikel Merino has been dubbed the World Cup 'super sub' after scoring two last-minute winners in the knockout stages to eliminate Portugal and Belgium from the competition. At this tournament, he has become the first player in World Cup history to score the winning goal in two different knockout-stage matches as a substitute, and also the first Spanish player to score two winning goals after the 80th minute at the World Cup.

Jul 19 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Skubal deals and Torkelson mashes in easy win over Angels

Spencer Torkelson hit a pair of home runs in a relatively easy win.

Jul 19 • 12:43 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Seahawks Get Blunt Jadarian Price Outlook Before Training Camp

The Seattle Seahawks will be counting on Jadarian Price early in the 2026 season, with Zach Charbonnet likely to miss the start of the campaign as he returns from injury. Moreover, Seattle did lose Kenneth Walker III to the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency. Last season for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Price played 242 total snaps, leading to a 78.6 overall […] The post Seahawks Get Blunt Jadarian Price Outlook Before Training Camp appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 18 • 10:24 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Scientists identify the rare meteorite that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely an exceptionally rare CO chondrite from a distant region of the solar system. Its unusual chemistry suggests that planet-cooling dust and debris, rather than sulfur inside the asteroid, may have delivered the deadliest blow.

Jul 18 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Nets' Brown Ranked No. 6 Rookie in Summer League

Mikel Brown Jr. is electrifying Brooklyn fans with elite two-way play, showcasing the shifty shot-creation and defensive length that cement his status as a cornerstone of the Nets' future.

Jul 18 • 7:53 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

76ers Leverage Rare Advantage as LeBron James Pursuit Nears End

The Philadelphia 76ers got an unlikely leg up in their recruitment of LeBron James at Fanatics Fest in New York City. The post 76ers Leverage Rare Advantage as LeBron James Pursuit Nears End appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 18 • 7:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

How Adam Sandler Apparently Wants To Help Travis Kelce's Acting Career

So are we getting Kelce in a Grown Ups film?

Jul 18 • 7:06 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Sports Illustrated Is Right: Drew Mestemaker Could Be the Most Impactful Transfer in the Big 12

Sports Illustrated is right to call Drew Mestemaker the Big 12's most impactful transfer. Oklahoma State doesn't just need a productive quarterback—it needs someone capable of changing the direction of the program. If the Cowboys bounce back in 2026, it will likely start under center.

Jul 18 • 6:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Kelly Clarkson celebrates ‘no more HR meetings’ after ending talk show

Here’s what Kelly Clarkson says she won’t miss after leaving ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ in the fall.

Jul 18 • 4:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Rutgers’ AD Keli Zinn Addresses Athletics Deficit on Big Business on Campus Podcast

Rutgers AD Keli Zinn reports drastic revenue increase for Rutgers athletics compared to last year.

Jul 18 • 3:16 PM EDT • Business • onthebanks.com

Rutgers’ AD Keli Zinn Addresses Athletics Deficit on Big Business on Campus Podcast

Rutgers AD Keli Zinn reports drastic revenue increase for Rutgers athletics compared to last year.

Jul 18 • 3:16 PM EDT • Business • sports.yahoo.com

Sandro Mamukelashvili Speaks on Becoming Teammates With Luka Doncic

How does Sandro Mamukelashvili feel about being teammates with Luka Doncic?

Jul 18 • 11:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

‘300-Pound Men From the Football Business Crying’ – CEO Reveals Emotional Meltdown Inside Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce’s Wedding

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding celebration has remained one of the biggest talking points across the NFL. Now, American Century Investments President and CEO Jonathan Thomas has revealed that...

Jul 18 • 11:05 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Burnham expected to reverse ban on new oil and gas drilling

Incoming prime minister likely to reverse manifesto pledge and allow new North Sea licences, reports say

Jul 18 • 6:46 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

Where seniors are targeted by scams in 2026. ‘Business imposters’ among CT’s top scam.

ationwide, reports involving older Americans were less likely than those involving younger age groups to cite either scam type.

Jul 18 • 5:40 AM EDT • Business • courant.com

Ranking Member Markey, Senator Hirono Reject Trump’s SBA Policy Proposal that Harms Underserved Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

Letter (PDF) (Washington, July 17) – Ranking Member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) submitted a comment letter to the Small Business Administration (SBA) opposing a proposed rule change by Trump’s SBA to the 8(a) Business Development Program that would harm underserved small business owners and entrepreneurs. The 8(a) Business Development Program was created by Congress more than 50 years ago to level the playing field for small business owners and entrepreneurs who have faced discrimination in starting and operating their businesses. The SBA’s proposed change ignores the existence of historic discrimination that minority and underserved small businesses have faced and continue to face. In the letter, the lawmakers wrote, “SBA’s proposed rule ignores present-day barriers that entrepreneurs from minority and underserved communities face. Discrimination is not dead; minority entrepreneurs continue to face reduced access to contracting opportunities and capital, as well as racial threats and targeting, including unequal treatment, refusal by others to work with minority-owned firms, being called racial slurs, and bias in the workplace. These barriers lead to wide underutilization of, and less revenue for, minority-owned businesses compared to majority-owned businesses, as supported by decades of disparity studies. The proposed rule diminishes the history of systemic racial and ethnic discrimination in the United States by claiming that remedies for discrimination create discrimination in and of themselves.” The lawmakers continued, “The program has always been open to anyone who can prove they have experienced prejudice or cultural bias in education, employment, entrepreneurship, and other facets of our society. Nonetheless SBA has moved forward with the proposed rule. It lacks a reasoned basis, purporting that the federal government has discriminated against White Americans, but offering no substantive qualitative or quantitative data or research in support. If the examples provided in the proposed rule are the only basis for what constitutes discrimination to the agency, they are woefully insufficient. The final rule must provide strong evidence that there is discrimination against White individuals and show how the rule is narrowly tailored to address it. The record remains devoid of evidence of discrimination against White individuals on the basis of race.” Ranking Member Markey is fighting to protect federal programs that address historic discrimination against small business owners from minority and underserved communities, and for a small business agenda that ensures economic opportunity for all. In June, Ranking Member Markey released a statement condemning the SBA’s proposed changes to the 8(a) Business Development Program. Also in June, Ranking Markey released a new report highlighting Trump’s drastic reduction in federal contracting dollars awarded to American small businesses, including minority-owned small businesses. In February, Ranking Member Markey, alongside Senators Hirono and Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Representative Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), introduced the Strengthening Place-based Access, Resources, and Knowledge (SPARK) Act to spur entrepreneurship and increase access to capital and resources for underserved entrepreneurs nationwide. Ranking Member Markey previously held a field hearing in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to discuss how government and the private sector can come together to make entrepreneurship more accessible for underserved communities. Earlier in February, Ranking Member Markey secured funding with the Appropriations Committee for Small Business Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, SCORE Chapters, and Veterans Business Outreach Centers and provisions to rein in the Administration’s attempts to eliminate programs that support women, veterans, and underserved entrepreneurs. In January, Ranking Member Markey sent a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to oppose rule changes that would gut protections against discriminatory lending practices that harm small businesses. In December 2025, Ranking Member Markey sent a letter to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler expressing significant concerns with the SBA’s overly burdensome request and unclear guidance for extensive financial documentation over the holidays, as a part of their sweeping attempts to dismantle the 8(a) Business Development Program. In July and December 2025, Ranking Member Markey sent letters to the SBA Administrator demanding answers about the Trump administration’s efforts to limit economic opportunity for American entrepreneurs, including immigrants. In May 2025, Ranking Member Markey sent a letter to the SBA Administrator rejecting President Trump’s FY 2026 budget proposal and calling on SBA to immediately release funding for the entrepreneurial development programs, which include programs like the Women’s Business Centers and the Veteran’s Business Development Centers that support underserved small business owners. In April 2025, Ranking Member Markey introduced the New Start Act of 2025 to establish a five-year pilot program providing grants to support entrepreneurial development training for currently or formerly incarcerated individuals. In February 2025, Ranking Member Markey sent letters to the SBA Administrator and Government Accountability Office (GAO) condemning President Trump’s war on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) policies and asking how the SBA intends to implement Trump’s anti-DEIA executive orders. ###

Jul 17 • 5:23 PM EDT • Business • sbc.senate.gov

Senator says key piece of college sports legislation 'probably' has 60 votes to clear upper chamber

A lawmaker sponsoring a key piece of federal college sports legislation says he believes the bill likely has the support it needs to make it through the upper chamber

Jul 17 • 5:07 PM EDT • Sports • abcnews.com

ESPN predicts Georgia football's most likely defeat

ESPN predicts the most likely loss on Georgia's 2026 schedule, which is ranked as the easiest in the SEC

Jul 17 • 3:20 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Nickel Fingerprints Reveal What the Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Was Made Of

The culprit may have been an unusually dry relic from the outer solar system.

Jul 17 • 1:59 PM EDT • Science • zmescience.com

Apple, Google must stop profiting off AI nudify apps, San Francisco AG says

Official estimates Google and Apple likely made millions in nudify app fees.

Jul 17 • 12:10 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com

'These are striking forecasts': Super El Niño keeps getting even more likely, and it could bring a humanitarian crisis

Forecasts point to the ongoing El Niño rapidly strengthening to a likely all-time record in the coming months, fueling temperature rises and extreme weather.

Jul 17 • 11:56 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com

Strolling the street with drink in hand could be legalized in 5 Berkeley nightlife area

In “entertainment zones,” you can order booze from a bar and sip it outside places like Berkeley Rep, La Marcha or Chez Panisse.

Jul 17 • 10:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • berkeleyside.org

SpaceX IPO earns millions for US Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler

U.S. Small Business ​Administration head Kelly Loeffler multiplied the value of her investment in Elon Musk's SpaceX after she was nominated for the ‌job, earning millions of dollars from the company's record initial public offering, a Reuters review of her financial disclosures showed.

Jul 17 • 6:01 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Travis Kelce’s First Post-Wedding Workout Brings Chiefs Season Back

Travis Kelce is back to training for a new NFL season with the Chiefs post his high-profile wedding to Taylor Swift. After renewing his contract with the Chiefs amid previous retirement rumors, the tight end is back to the grind. For those unversed, Kelce tied the knot with the pop star on July 3 at […] The post Travis Kelce’s First Post-Wedding Workout Brings Chiefs Season Back appeared first on Reality Tea.

Jul 17 • 4:28 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Ribbon cutting, tours planned to celebrate completion  of Kelce College of Business building and Besse Hotel renovation

Pittsburg State University and the community will celebrate the completion of two transformative projects with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and self-guided tours on Aug. 11.

Jul 17 • 4:12 AM EDT • Business • pittstate.edu

Did ancient Egyptian princesses use weapons? Controversial study claims they hunted or trained with the military, but not all experts agree.

Nearly 4,000-year-old skeletal remains show that several royal women repeatedly used their upper-body muscles. Researchers link those changes to archery and weapon training, but outside experts urge caution.

Jul 17 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com

The Unlikely Story Of How Konami Asked Evil Empire To Make Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

What started as a simple crossover request became a years-long collaboration.

Jul 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Technology • gameinformer.com

Sports without politics is a fantasy and the World Cup proves it

From ancient Greece to Nazi Germany, sport and politics have long been intertwined. Nevertheless, we still imagine that international sport can be kept above the fray and serve as a neutral arena where nations compete on merit alone. In this article, diplomacy scholar Geoffrey Allen Pigman argues the 2026 FIFA World Cup shows this is a dangerous illusion. When international sport is left entirely to revenue-maximizing private bodies like FIFA, it doesn't escape politics, but rather surrenders to its worst expressions. With the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics fast approaching, the IOC must decide whether to learn that lesson or repeat the same mistakes. The largest and most lucrative FIFA World Cup ever draws toward its climactic conclusion amidst a swirl of controversy. Team members, staff, fans, and spectators have been denied their right to enter the United States to participate, and US President Donald Trump intervened with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to overturn a referee’s call that Trump believed disadvantaged the US national team. It is a moment to step back and reflect on what the purposes of international sport mega-events like the World Cup, and international sport more broadly, are, and what they should be. Does international sport serve public purposes? Is there a public interest? Or is it primarily a private endeavor organized by commercial enterprises to entertain the global public (and generate profit in the process), which is occasionally used by governments and leaders for raisons d’etat? Central to the idea of sport is the principle of fair play, which in the international context demands that games be free from political interference. However, it is impossible to separate sport from politics, all claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The most positive political use of international sport through the millennia has been to facilitate diplomacy. The use of international sport for diplomatic objectives has existed since at least the time of the ancient Olympic Games, around which was instituted the custom of the Ekecheiria, or Olympic Truce, between participating states to facilitate fair competition and diplomatic achievements by ensuring that participants could travel safely to the Olympiad. In his seminal work On Diplomacy (1987), diplomacy scholar James Der Derian characterized the objectives of diplomacy as overcoming alienation and mediating estrangement between governments and between peoples. One increasingly important diplomatic tool in the technology-infused media environment over the past century has been public diplomacy, under which governments and non-state diplomatic actors (e.g. transnational corporations) communicate to global publics about their international policy objectives and to shape their global brand image. Political scientist Michał Kobierecki, in his important book Sports Diplomacy (2020), views sports diplomacy as falling broadly within the ambit of public diplomacy, as international sport intimately involves the participation of global publics as spectators and consumers of global media. Diplomacy scholar Stuart Murray and this author, in a 2013 article, distinguish between international sport used for diplomatic purposes and international sport-as-diplomacy, which encompasses the range of diplomacy that occurs as teams and competitors, spectators and fans, and government officials all converge for international sporting events like the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. Diplomacy scholar H.E. Chehabi, in a 2001 article on US-Iran sports diplomacy, describes the interaction between spectators and fans at international sporting events as “people-to-people diplomacy,” in which relationships develop independently of governments and their objectives. Diplomacy by the aforementioned definitions is often unsuccessful. Moreover, all too often the tools of diplomacy may be employed by governments and other actors to thwart or oppose the objectives of diplomacy as characterized by Der Derian. Governments routinely use the tools of public diplomacy to disseminate propaganda, spreading misinformation in the attempt to deceive global publics about their objectives and to create misleading impressions about their brand identity. Within sports diplomacy, the term “sportswashing” has been coined recently to describe how governments invest in and promote international sport to create positive global public impressions of their nations and, in doing so, to distract the global public from their deficient records in areas such as human rights and democratic governance. Murray, in his 2018 book Sports Diplomacy: Origins, Theory and Practice, introduces the concept of sports anti-diplomacy, wherein governments intentionally use international sport to advance aggressive and nationalistic objectives. Obvious historical examples include Hitler’s use of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to glorify his Third Reich and the 1969 El Salvador-Honduras football “war.” SUGGESTED READING The beautiful game made ugly By Emily Ryall FIFA argues that it is and seeks to be apolitical in its stewardship of international Association Football (soccer). FIFA policies governing bids to host the World Cup require uninhibited and non-discriminatory access for players, team staff, and spectators of all participating countries to host nations and venues. It became clear soon after Trump returned to power in the United States in January 2025 that Trump’s political intentions and objectives to limit non-US citizens from living and working in the United States and, in numerous cases, even visiting the country, would collide with FIFA’s host nation policies. Beginning soon after the start of the second Trump administration, US federal authorities imposed restrictions on entry to the United States of citizens of between 20 and 40 countries for any purpose, with only limited exceptions. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began arresting non-US citizens in the United States, including persons with and without legal status, holding them in jails, concentration camps, and other detention facilities until they were deported to their home or third countries, where they faced substantive risks to their personal safety. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, in an effort to ensure the most successful and lucrative World Cup in history, engaged diplomatically with President Trump in an attempt to facilitate entry to the US for World Cup participants. Infantino did all in his power to ingratiate himself with Trump, to the extent of creating a FIFA “Peace Prize,” which he awarded to Trump in December 2025 at a ceremony in the then Trump-controlled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on the occasion of the World Cup draw. The prize was an ersatz consolation for someone who aspired in vain to win the rather more prestigious and well-known Nobel Peace Prize. And in the run-up to the World Cup, conditions became worse. In February 2026, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a war of aggression against Iran, illegal under international law, under the false pretence that Iran’s government was preparing to attack the United States and Israel. During the US aerial bombardment of Iran, US planes bombed Azadi Stadium, the facility where Iran’s national football team trained. As the 2026 FIFA World Cup began, it was clear that Infantino’s efforts had been for naught: the Trump administration would not adhere to FIFA policies governing access to World Cup host nations. World Cup referee Omar Artan, a citizen of Somalia, was denied a US visa to enter the United States to participate in the World Cup. Trump’s government only granted US visas to Iran’s football team ten days before they were scheduled to arrive for the tournament. Numerous members of the support staff for Iran’s team were denied US visas. Iran’s team, which had been scheduled to train in Arizona, was directed to shift its training site to Tijuana, Mexico, notwithstanding that all three of their group stage matches took place at US venues. The US Department of Homeland Security only permitted the Iranian team to enter the US on the day before each scheduled match and then to return to Mexico immediately after playing. Members of Iraq’s and Switzerland’s football teams were delayed for hours by US officials at the US border, and an Iraqi team photographer was refused entry. Spectators and fans from Haïti and Iran were denied entry to the United States altogether. A large number of fans from a range of countries had their applications for US visas rejected. There were multiple off-ramps through which participants could have avoided the negative consequences of Trump’s decisions for the 2026 World Cup. Once it was clear that the Trump government intended to violate the established expectations for World Cup hosts, FIFA could have shifted the matches scheduled to take place in the United States to Mexico and Canada. The three nations were already designated as co-hosts, and host cities and venues had been selected. Once it was clear that FIFA, governed by FIFA boss Gianni Infantino’s dependent and dysfunctional relationship with Trump, would never consider this option on its own, it fell to the national football federations to act. The national federations, particularly some combination of federations of the leading contenders (France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Morocco, England, Germany, etc.), could have refused to participate under the US-imposed conditions or, at the least, demanded an ironclad agreement with the Trump government that FIFA policies on access would be respected. ___ International sport is inextricably entangled with diplomacy of different sorts, for good or ill, it cannot be considered to be in the purely private realm and left to revenue-maximizing private actors. ___ Why did neither FIFA nor the national football federations act to protect the interests of players, team staff, referees, fans, and spectators? In essence, the relentless engines of capitalism prevailed over norm observance, ethics, and fair play. The revenue interests of FIFA, sponsors, global media, and host cities won out. FIFA’s managers viewed hosting another World Cup principally in the United States as a veritable pot of gold for FIFA and its collaborators. FIFA has estimated its own revenue over the 2023-26 budget cycle, which includes the 2026 World Cup, at $13 billion, revised up from an initial projection of $11 billion, and 72% higher than the previous revenue cycle. Of that total, FIFA is estimated to have generated $8.9 billion from the Cup itself in revenue from TV rights ($3.92 billion), sponsorships ($2.69 billion), ticket sales ($3.1 billion), licensing rights, and other sources. A joint study by FIFA and the World Trade Organization estimates that the World Cup will contribute over $40 billion to global GDP, including nearly $14 billion in direct visitor spending in the three host countries (but principally in the United States, which hosted the lion’s share of the matches). The FIFA World Cup is now reportedly “the single most lucrative recurring commercial property in global sport.” And yet, notwithstanding the Trump government’s uses of the World Cup for sports anti-diplomacy, and the climate of anxiety that this created for participants and spectators, diplomacy that did not depend upon governments was able to thrive at the World Cup. Examples of successful people-to-people diplomacy were legion, as citizens of towns and cities across the States, as well as in Mexico and Canada, welcomed team members, their families and supporters, to training sites across North America. Fans of different teams joined together in person in stadiums for matches, at watch parties and bars, and at welcome events sponsored by host cities. The joy and camaraderie shared between the citizenry of Boston and Scotland’s “Tartan Army” of fans is but one example of how the “Beautiful Game” brings people together. Friendships forged across continents are likely to endure well beyond the Cup final. Even those achievements cannot be seen as unalloyed, however. As South African football fan Byron Pillay commented to Al Jazeera, “Football is called the Beautiful Game for a reason, for its ability to unite people. But it’s hard to believe in that magic with the politics and war rhetoric off the field of play, especially when one of the tournament hosts is central to that.” Ultimately, the experience of the 2026 FIFA World Cup illustrates that, as international sport is inextricably entangled with diplomacy of different sorts, for good or ill, it cannot be considered to be in the purely private realm and left to revenue-maximizing private actors. As long as there is the possibility of diplomatic progress in mediating estrangement between governments or between peoples, there is a broad and overarching public interest in international sport. Likewise, as it would be difficult to put on an international sport mega-event without international sporting organizations like FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), global media firms, and companies purchasing sponsorships, public and private interests in international sport must coexist, most likely somewhere on a shifting spectrum between partnership and rivalry or cross purposes. As the World Cup wraps up, the IOC needs to consider its lessons before the scheduled 2028 Los Angeles Olympics if they want to avoid a media-hyped Trump version of the 1936 Berlin Olympiad. The IOC and the National Olympic Committees need to set conditions on and make demands of Trump’s government with clearly articulated consequences for non-compliance, up to and including cancellation of the Games. Time is running out for the IOC, as unlike with the FIFA World Cup, there is no at-the-ready alternate venue for Los Angeles.

Jul 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • iai.tv

Jon Gruden Reveals One Big Regret From Raiders Tenure

Former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden likely has many regrets from his coaching career, but this one has to really sting. The post Jon Gruden Reveals One Big Regret From Raiders Tenure appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 16 • 6:59 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Oops! Ancient Bronze Age shaman long assumed to be a man was actually a woman, DNA reveals

A DNA analysis of a 4,000-year-old skeleton buried with an elaborate metalworking tool kit near Stonehenge has revealed that the individual, long assumed to be a male shaman, was actually a woman.

Jul 16 • 1:04 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

Trump is expected to make election conspiracies a focus of his national address

President Donald Trump is set to address the nation on Thursday night on topics he said will include elections and voting machines, suggesting he is likely to revisit some of the unproven claims he has previously made about Republican losses, particularly his own in 2020.

Jul 16 • 10:44 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

How wildfire smoke affects air quality and your health

Coming up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, MPR News guest host Kelly Gordon talks about how air quality is monitored and forecast and the health risks of breathing wildfire smoke.

Jul 16 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • mprnews.org

Governor signs bill to expand mental health coverage for volunteer first responders in NH

Gov. Kelly Ayotte was surrounded by legislators and first responders for a signing of a bill that expands access to mental health coverage for volunteer first responders.

Jul 16 • 9:49 AM EDT • Health • wmur.com

Highly engaged Americans know more about politics

People who are highly engaged in public life are more likely than those who are less engaged to correctly answer several factual questions about politics.

Jul 16 • 9:36 AM EDT • Politics • pewresearch.org

Engagement in public life is linked with Americans’ views of politics, news

Americans who participate more in public life are more interested in politics – and more likely to have positive feelings about the state of their local communities.

Jul 16 • 9:36 AM EDT • Politics • pewresearch.org

Younger and older Americans engage in public life in different ways

Older adults are more likely to participate in civic activities like voting, donating or attending religious services, while younger adults engage more in online spaces.

Jul 16 • 9:36 AM EDT • Politics • pewresearch.org

Trump expected to make election conspiracies a focus of his national address

Trump's comments suggest he's likely in Thursday's speech to revisit some of the unproven claims he's previously made about Republican losses

Jul 16 • 9:36 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Buffalo Bills quarterback is considered 'greatest of his generation'

Three names are locked into the Bills QB Mount Rushmore: Jim Kelly, Josh Allen and Joe Ferguson. This Bills backup should be the fourth.

Jul 16 • 3:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Trump’s address is likely to cast new cloud over midterm elections

President Donald Trump has passed up multiple chances to explain to Americans how his latest escalation will win the war in Iran or how he’ll alleviate their perpetually high costs for groceries, housing and fuel.

Jul 16 • 12:01 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

‘Social media bans are likely to make things worse’: psychologist Candice Odgers on kids, tech and mental health

She has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years and fears the debate obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers

Jul 16 • 12:00 AM EDT • Health • theguardian.com

Google and Epic Abandon Settlement, Clearing the Way for Rival Android App Stores

Google and Epic Games this week withdrew their joint settlement agreement after it became clear the court was unlikely to allow it. With the settlement out, Google is bound by a permanent injunction issued in October 2024 requiring it to allow alternative app stores on Android devices. In a court filing [PDF], Google said that it plans to begin supporting alternative app stores on July 22. In a statement to The Verge, Google said it decided to withdraw the motion to avoid a prolonged legal fight.

Jul 15 • 8:02 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

The ’Gay’ Attacks on Lindsey Graham Are All About Politics

Was Lindsey Graham gay? As the author of a book about the history of gay Washington, D.C., it’s a question I’ve been asked frequently for years, and even more so since his sudden death last weekend. The South Carolina Republican’s lifelong confirmed bachelorhood, vocal intonation, and Southern dandy demeanor (if not sartorial choices) prompted many to conclude that he was, as they say in that part of the country, “light in his loafers.” Graham’s repeated attestations to the contrary had zero effect on those invested in the narrative that he was. Only about the matter of J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored cross-dressing (for which there is much circumstantial but no direct evidence) am I questioned more. Whenever I’ve been asked to speculate upon Graham’s sexuality—and speculate was all that I or anyone else could do—I always answered the question honestly. While my personal sense is that Graham was probably gay, as a journalist and a historian I cannot rely on my intuition to make factual assertions. (Gaydar hasn’t yet been scientifically perfected.) Given the absence of any known female or male romantic interests, Graham may very well have been a heterosexual unlucky in love. He might also have been asexual. Barring the highly unlikely postmortem emergence of a personal diary or some other unassailable evidence attesting to Graham’s innermost yearnings, we will never know the answer. As is depressingly the case these days when a public figure dies, a chorus of voices reveled in Graham’s passing, many of them making light of his presumed homosexuality.

Jul 15 • 7:30 PM EDT • Politics • thefp.com

Latest update reveals likely plan for Patriots WR Kayshon Boutte

Will Kayshon Boutte still be with the New England Patriots for the start of the 2026 season?

Jul 15 • 7:26 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

NFL Skill Guys Back From Major Injury To Monitor

Injuries are a brutal reality of the NFL, and usually it’s not a massive hit that derails a player’s season, but a misstep on wet grass or turf that puts them on the shelf. During the 2025 NFL season, several standout offensive players – some of whom were likely on your fantasy team – were either ...

Jul 15 • 5:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Windows 0-day drops the same day Microsoft releases record number of patches

HiveLegacy is a "powerful primitive" that's likely capable of other nefarious actions.

Jul 15 • 3:59 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com

Sports Column: Fletcher Mackel explains how & why professional hockey in New Orleans could succeed

Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) in New Orleans serving as the anchor tenant at a newly renovated Municipal Auditorium

Jul 15 • 3:37 PM EDT • Sports • wdsu.com

Moving Sioux Falls Forward: Heartland Energy

You've likely experienced its service and didn't even know it: How Heartland Energy literally helps power the growth of the Sioux Falls area.

Jul 15 • 2:26 PM EDT • Business • siouxfalls.business

Scientists stunned by bizarre find in 300-year-old bones: you won’t believe it - Futura-Sciences

Centuries-old bones, modern revelations It sounds straight out of a crime novel: can cannabis really get stuck in the human skeleton for hundreds of years? The answer, it turns out, is a resounding yes. Thanks to newly uncovered archaeological evidence, researchers have been able to identify persistent traces of the...

Jul 15 • 1:00 PM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com

How the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud Advances Innovation

Inder Monga Q&A on how Berkeley Lab experts are contributing to key aspects of DOE’s American Science Cloud project to accelerate science.

Jul 15 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov

Want to get published in a top-tier journal? Where you're from matters

An analysis of 110,000 submissions to elite general science journals shows that researchers from prestigious universities are more than three times more likely

Jul 15 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • colorado.edu

Valve is “starting to sunset” replacement Steam Deck batteries, says iFixit, as it turns attention to alternatives

iFixit recently revealed to a customer that it is unlikely to receive more OEM Steam Deck LCD batteries from Valve moving forward.

Jul 15 • 6:03 AM EDT • Technology • pcguide.com

Nets' Mikel Brown: Contributes 16 points in return

Nets' Mikel Brown: Contributes 16 points in return

Jul 14 • 8:14 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com

Workshop gives Marquette County small business owners tips on hiring in the modern world

Topics included what candidates look for in a company and how to make yours more enticing for potential hires.

Jul 14 • 5:30 PM EDT • Business • uppermichiganssource.com

Who scored for Spain? See Mikel Oyarzabal penalty goal vs. France at World Cup

Spain's Mikel Oyarzabal converted a penalty to give his team and early 1-0 lead vs. France at the 2026 World Cup semifinals. See the highlight.

Jul 14 • 3:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal nets penalty, taking lead vs France

Mikel Oyarzabal scored an early penalty, that gave Spain a 1-0 lead against France.

Jul 14 • 3:26 PM EDT • Sports • foxsports.com

The celebrities who had to RSVP 'no' to Taylor Swift's wedding, from Shania Twain to Ryan Seacrest

First came the guest list. Now comes a new Hollywood flex: explaining why you couldn't make Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding.

Jul 14 • 2:24 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

T. rex 'Gus' sells for record-breaking $50.1 million

The Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton surpassed its pre-sale estimate and set a new auction record for a dinosaur fossil.

Jul 14 • 1:24 PM EDT • Technology • dw.com

From HBCUs to the Bay, mentoring the next generation of scientists

This summer, seven fellows in the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change program are pursuing research projects with Berkeley mentors while learning about potential research careers.

Jul 14 • 1:03 PM EDT • Science • news.berkeley.edu

T rex fossil ‘Gus’ sells for $50.1m at New York auction, setting new record

Skeleton judged to be one of the largest and most complete ever unearthed was excavated on a ranch in South Dakota

Jul 14 • 11:31 AM EDT • Technology • theguardian.com

The Cowboys players who will likely exceed expectations in 2026

Who on the Cowboys do you think will exceed expectations this season?

Jul 14 • 10:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

988 Enters Its Fourth Year as Demand Grows and the Mental Health and Substance Use Landscape Shifts

Data as of March 2026 show that demand for 988 continues to rise, with the volume of calls, texts, and chats 15% higher than a year earlier and nearly 50% higher than two years ago. States are also answering more calls in-state, where counselors are more likely to be familiar with local resources.

Jul 14 • 9:00 AM EDT • Health • kff.org

Giants' Isaiah Likely named breakout candidate to watch in 2026

The Athletic has named New York Giants TE Isaiah Likely as a breakout candidate to watch in 2026.

Jul 14 • 8:55 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Chad Kelly blames Toronto Argonauts struggles on World Cup

Jul 14 • 7:55 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

New York to impose country’s first statewide moratorium on data centers

New York will block the construction of any new large data centers for up to a year so the state can create a new set of rules.

Jul 14 • 7:36 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Docs with greater clinical knowledge less likely to order low-value imaging

Wasteful tests and treatments, such as imaging for an uncomplicated headache, continue to plague the U.S. healthcare system, experts note.

Jul 14 • 6:20 AM EDT • Business • radiologybusiness.com

Too many stories, too little space

Well, this week’s column presents a problem: there are far too many things in Colorado Politics of interest, and I want to write about them all. But given my kindly editor is unlikely to let me expand my column to booklet length (Ed: correct), I’ll just have to mention a few things in a concise […]

Jul 14 • 3:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com

Sale of multimillion-dollar T rex skeleton is big headache for scientists

Palaeontologists warn before auction at Sotheby’s in New York that super-rich collectors are harming research

Jul 14 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com

Austin Reaves, Sandro Mamukelashvili are helping Lakers' cap situation

Austin Reaves and Sandro Mamukelashvili did something with their contracts to help give the Lakers some added salary cap flexibility.

Jul 13 • 11:32 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

iOS 26.6 Will Warn You About Malicious iMessages

Apple is adding a new warning about malicious iMessages in iOS 26.6, according to X user @limpless_skelly, who shared a mockup of the notification. The pop-up will warn users that a message could be trying to harm their iPhone or compromise their privacy. Apple asks users to share the message so it can guard against future attacks, and there are "Not Now," "Share With Apple," and "Don't Report" options to tap.

Jul 13 • 7:02 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

The Quintessential Trump-era Politician

In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jul 13 • 4:19 PM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com

Jason Kelce opens up about his 4 daughters being Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s flower girls

Jason Kelce says his daughters were ‘very happy’ to be uncle Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s flower girls.

Jul 13 • 4:07 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Kelsey Mitchell is all business

LOS ANGELES -- The Indiana Fever visited Los Angeles to play the Sparks last Wednesday.

Jul 13 • 3:38 PM EDT • Business • thesportingtribune.com

2026 World Cup Odds: Books Hoping For Spain-England Title Match

One thing sportsbooks don't want? A rematch of the 2022 World Cup final. Patrick Everson breaks down the semifinal betting action.

Jul 13 • 3:09 PM EDT • Sports • foxsports.com

Nearly 6 in 10 young women get health and wellness information from influencers

Young women are especially likely to say they often see influencer content about beauty and appearance.

Jul 13 • 2:56 PM EDT • Health • pewresearch.org