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IRONMAN 70.3 Boise race weekend underway with adaptive sports camp, pro athlete panel

IRONMAN 70.3 has arrived in Boise, and the activities have already begun ahead of Saturday's race.The Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) and IRONMAN partnered

Jul 24 • 6:23 PM EDT • Sports • idahonews.com

Local book clubs provide page-turning entertainment for readers of all ages

The main library has been a repository of knowledge for generations, and much of it is contained in the pages of the many books that fill the shelves. Book clubs are a great way to explore some of the numerous titles.

Jul 24 • 6:10 PM EDT • Entertainment • 13abc.com

WATCH: Trump says Venezuela is 'not ready yet' for elections after U.S. ouster of Maduro

“They’re not ready yet for the elections, but at some point they will be,” Trump said before mentioning the country’s prowess in the Miss Universe pageants once he owned.

Jul 24 • 5:52 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Local book clubs provide page-turning entertainment for readers of all ages

Toledo Lucas County Public Library offers a variety of clubs: from fiction, to horror and everything in between.

Jul 24 • 5:23 PM EDT • Entertainment • 13abc.com

PlayStation Network down, leaving thousands unable to play digital games

Sony's status page read that it was "working to resolve the issue as soon as possible".

Jul 24 • 12:59 PM EDT • Technology • bbc.com

Essentia Health looks for volunteer pet therapy teams

Therapy dogs comfort patients, visitors and Essentia staff

Jul 24 • 11:07 AM EDT • Health • essentiahealth.org

Facebook Testing Immersive Video Feed as Home Page

The social platform says it will test a video-first look for users when they open the app in select countries, potentially bringing it to the U.S. next year.

Jul 24 • 9:48 AM EDT • Technology • hollywoodreporter.com

Interviews Available from 2026 OVC Football Media Day Presented by Shaw Sports Turf

CHARLESTON - Last week, the Ohio Valley Football Conference hosted their 2026 Football Media Day presented by Shaw Sports Turf. During the day, the Buccaneers' Head Coach and student-athletes spent time speaking with members of the media previewing the upcoming 2026 season. There is an available copy of one of the interviews with each of representatives from Charleston Southern on the department's YouTube page which can be found at the links on this page. Additionally, a link to the ESPN+ broadcast with the segment featuring Charleston Southern is attached here as well.

Jul 24 • 9:20 AM EDT • Sports • csusports.com

Intermountain Health Plans to Expand Ownership of Hospitals and Clinic Operations Group in Southeast Idaho

Intermountain Health plans to expand its partnership with physicians in a network of facilities and providers in Southeast Idaho that includes two local hospitals along with 60+ affiliate clinics that employ about 2,300 physicians and caregivers. Plans include transitioning Surgery Partners' ownership interests in the network to In...

Jul 24 • 9:13 AM EDT • Health • news.intermountainhealth.org

Museum of Arts, History, Science to host Sustainability Super Saturday

HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) – In downtown Evansville, the Museum of Arts, History, and Science hosts its Sustainability Super Saturday event tomorrow. The event will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and o…

Jul 24 • 8:47 AM EDT • Science • tristatehomepage.com

Reckitt to take £175mn hit from sale of Russian hygiene business

Consumer goods group began process to dispose of division more than four years ago

Jul 24 • 4:27 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

Cassidy shifts on CDC nominee, citing change to disputed autism page

But the page’s core claim still suggests a long debunked link between vaccines and autism.

Jul 23 • 3:00 PM EDT • Health • washingtonpost.com

Maine Democrats call on Bennett to denounce GOP funds

Specifically, Democrats say a political action committee called Maine Wins Together, which is supporting Bennett, recently received $100,000 from donors who have also given to former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who is now running for the 2nd Congressional District.

Jul 23 • 2:40 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Ohio State researchers to lead national teams exploring science, AI innovation

The Ohio State University continues to build momentum as a national leader in artificial intelligence research and innovation. This week, two teams led by Ohio State researchers joined a $293 million initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to harness AI for breakthroughs in energy dominance, discovery science and national sec...

Jul 23 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • news.osu.edu

Game Thread: White Sox (53-47) at Rangers (51-50)

Chicago looks to turn the page after Texas thumping

Jul 22 • 6:53 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Biotech experts want FDA drug reviews based on science, not politics

Biotech experts call for the FDA to prioritize scientific expertise over political influence in drug reviews amid recent leadership changes and staffing challenges.

Jul 22 • 3:53 PM EDT • Politics • journalrecord.com

Ohio State president is building new pathways for business partnerships

The Ohio State University is committed to working with the state’s business community to bring excellence at scale to research partnerships, student entrepreneurship and workforce development.That message was part of a conversation on leadership and other topics hosted by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce this week between Ohio State President ...

Jul 22 • 2:00 PM EDT • Business • news.osu.edu

Insurers cut prices in hunt for new oil and gas business

Projects in safe regions become more highly prized and send premiums down as competition rises

Jul 22 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

AdventHealth, Intermountain Health Plan Partnership to Strengthen Healthcare for Denver Metro Communities

AdventHealth and Intermountain Health plan to unite their Denver-area services to bring more accessible, connected care to the area’s growing communities. The two healthcare systems have signed a letter of intent and anticipate signing a definitive agreement in the coming weeks to form a joint venture that will improve access to high-quality h...

Jul 21 • 1:00 PM EDT • Health • news.intermountainhealth.org

Axing UK science department risks slower policymaking, say tech leaders

Industry figures welcome Kanishka Narayan’s promotion as AI minister but warn shake-up could push sector down agenda

Jul 21 • 9:56 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

Affronts to our children’s children

As my regular reader (hi Jeff!) will recall, I’m quite fond of the Colorado Politics section called Out West Roundup. On that page, readers can learn about quite a few things happening in the American west that missed the front page. It’s a great way to keep current on key issues here in the west, […]

Jul 21 • 3:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com

Linklaters partners handed record £2.5mn payday as Asia business booms

‘Magic circle’ law firm cites Hong Kong listings work and growth in US as it reports bumper payouts for top ranks

Jul 21 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • ft.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

Small Businesses Adopted AI Faster Than They Wrote Rules For It

Most small businesses run on AI with no written policy. EU disclosure rules and state laws are coming. The one-page AI policy that answers regulators and clients.

Jul 19 • 9:09 AM EDT • Business • forbes.com

iOS 26 vs iOS 27: How Apple Is Completely Replacing Siri With Next-Gen AI

Comparing iOS 27 vs iOS 26 reveals faster app launches by up to 30% and an 80% quicker AirDrop. See the new full-page widgets and liquid glass slider.

Jul 19 • 1:00 AM EDT • Technology • geeky-gadgets.com

After all that ‘Odyssey’ vitriol, Elliot Page isn’t even playing Achilles

Elliot Page, the target of transphobic ‘The Odyssey’ attacks, isn’t even playing Achilles.

Jul 18 • 3:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Eben Sadie: ‘Culture, not science, makes wine’

South Africa’s pioneering winemaker, a driving force behind the country’s new wave of winemaking, talks research, instinct and succession

Jul 18 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

Secret Lair: A Marvelous Mathom Superdrop

Pack your pocket-handkerchief, polish your buttons, and mind the Dragon—The Hobbit comes to Secret Lair on August 17, 2026!

Jul 17 • 8:30 AM EDT • Technology • magic.wizards.com

Pages - Governor Moore announces Code Red air quality condition in Maryland resulting from wildfire smoke

An official website of the State of Maryland.

Jul 17 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • health.maryland.gov

ICYMI: Sen. Banks Joins The Evening Edit on Fox Business Network

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) joined The Evening Edit with Elizabeth MacDonald on Fox Business Network to discuss the debate over birthright citizenship and his Citizenship Act of 2026. Click the image above for the full discussion. Key Excerpts: Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.): “It’s very simple, I am taking a page right out of Justice Kavanaugh’s playbook in his concurring opinion […]

Jul 16 • 11:35 AM EDT • Business • banks.senate.gov

The Science Behind Ketchup Pouring Could Lead to Ceramic 3D Printing

3D printing’s usefulness goes far beyond plastic.

Jul 16 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • nist.gov

Scotland's papers: Hospital staff health alert and England exit World Cup

A review of the front page stories from the daily newspapers in Scotland.

Jul 16 • 2:02 AM EDT • Health • bbc.com

Pre-order page for HTC VIVE Eagle smart glasses reveals release date before it's taken down

HTC's VIVE Eagle smart glasses are coming to the US although a pre-order listing on Amazon was removed from the site.

Jul 16 • 12:00 AM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com

Future scientists explore the wonders of biology at STC summer camp

From growing plants and examining cells under microscopes to culturing bacteria and dissecting organisms, middle school students are discovering the excitement of science through STC annual Biology Explorers Camp.

Jul 15 • 3:53 PM EDT • Science • news.southtexascollege.edu

STC Biology faculty member inspires students to see science beyond the classroom

For South Texas College STC Biology faculty member Xiomara Galvan Garcia, science isn’t just a subject to memorize, but a way of understanding the world.

Jul 15 • 3:47 PM EDT • Science • news.southtexascollege.edu

Amid hardware legal battle, OpenAI releases a $230 keyboard for Codex

OpenAI, which is in the middle of a legal battle with Apple over hardware trade theft allegations, just released a light-up keyboard designed to be paired with its agentic coding app.

Jul 15 • 3:41 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com

Apple highlights 2026 sales tax holidays for Macs, iPads, and more in 10 states

Apple published its 2026 sales tax holiday page this week, outlining when customers in 10 U.S. states can buy select...

Jul 15 • 1:30 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com

OpenAI finally launches hardware… for Codex

The collaboration with Work Louder is separate from OpenAI’s main hardware project, rumored to be some kind of smart speaker.

Jul 15 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Essentia Health encourages parents to schedule well-child/teen visits during slow summer months

As families settle into summer routines, Essentia Health is encouraging parents to take advantage of the season’s added flexibility by scheduling well-child/teen visits before school, sports and activities pick back up.

Jul 15 • 11:32 AM EDT • Health • essentiahealth.org

Trump is driving another nail into the coffin of US science

Under proposed reforms, political appointees will review grants to ensure they “advance the President’s priorities”

Jul 15 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

47 revelatory hours with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

To review this month’s supposed remake of 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, I must first correct the record. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced isn’t a game about pirates (and assassins) in the 18th century Caribbean. Sure, sure, that’s what the trailers would have you believe. They’ve go their clips of Edward Kenway swinging his swords and steering his pirate ship into cannon-blasting combat against British frigates. Is Resynced truly a pirate game? Of the 47 hours I spent playing Resynced over the past few weeks, I will admit I spent maybe 44 (?) of them collecting plunder with Blackbeard, drinking rum with Anne Bonny and debating the pros and cons of the lawless pirate-run settlement Nassau with Benjamin Hornigold. I may in fact have spent dozens of hours sailing to remote islands, reading treasure maps, opening messages left in bottles, sinking the odd Man o’ War with a well-timed broadside, collecting sea shanties for my crew, befriending a pet monkey, and hunting whales. I am nevertheless neither so Gullible nor so Narrow-Minded as to call the magnificent Resynced a “pirate remake.” Oh no. Forget any reviews of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced you may have read. Forget what you yourself may have played, if you’ve spent any time with the game since its launch. What Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is really about I’m here to give you the scoop (spoilers for Resynced’s Animus menu lore, which many players are probably not going to see): Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the new game whose development was led by Ubisoft Singapore, is set in the year 2096. It’s about a societal split, about revolution, about an old Assassin’s Creed adventure repurposed in the series’ distant future as propaganda or samizdat. It’s about the overheated future of 2096, essentially conquered by the series’ well-established nefarious Templar-run company Abstergo. (In this future, Abstergo is, among other things, remaking a 2013 pirate movie called Devils of the Caribbean, but this time in VR. The VR version will be backed by a marketing plan that involves AI influencers, a 10,000-avatar “metaverse premiere event” and that manufacturing of memes aimed at “50 million VR nodes.” See what I mean about Abstergo being evil?) Resynced is about a late 21st-century population mollified by the widespread use of Abstergo’s Animus devices which let people experience the lives of historical figures culled from “genetic memories.” It’s about an insurgent faction of Assassins. And it’s about a plan to wake the population into revolutionary fervor by showing them the memories of 18th century pirate Edward Kenway, who—as depicted in the original Black Flag and again in Resynced—gradually comes to an understanding about the Assassins of his day and their centuries old fight for freedom. Resynced is also about an AI developed within the late 21st-century Animus, called Ego. It has found a way to alter genetic memories, to create and show Animus users false ones. The game is about Ego’s efforts to tell the people experiencing Edward Kenway’s memories that Kenway was wrong, that fighting against order is folly, that we should crave a world where “compliance is rewarded with power.” Who are we in this game? We’re an unnamed Animus user in 2096 who experiences Kenway’s journey virtually. At four moments during Kenway’s exploits in the Caribbean our virtual jaunt can be interrupted for 10-15 minutes, as we explore Animus “rifts” where Ego explicitly tries to tell us how wrong Kenway was. None of this is what 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was about, of course. That was a different game, even if you also spent dozens of hours pirating as Kenway in that game, across missions and a map that’s been faithfully reintroduced and rebuilt for Resynced. The 2013 Black Flag was about you playing as an unnamed researcher newly hired in 2013 by Abstergo Entertainment, the video game development wing of the Templars’ evil-corp. In that game, you were assigned to use the Animus to dive into the genetic memories of Desmond Miles, a man who died in Assassin’s Creed III and who was descended from a long line of Assassins (and at least one Templar) whose adventures were featured across the prior AC games. In 2013’s Black Flag, your mission was to plumb the Edward Kenway experience for material that Abstergo could use in productions such as the motion picture Devils of the Caribbean, though the Templars had some ulterior motives for the assignment. Resynced is therefore not a remake of 2013’s Black Flag. It’s a sequel. It is a new game about a new exploration of Edward Kenway’s pirate/assassin journey, set 83 years after the framing sequences of the original game. Resynced provides a new narrative framework that, thanks to the concept of an AI that wants to alter historical memories, arrives with creative justification to tweak a now-classic 13-year old game. That makes Resynced, already a hot seller, a tantalizing hint of where Ubisoft could go with a line of Assassin’s Creed remakes. They could remake the first game, the Ezio games, even the recent ones set in ancient Egypt and Greece. And for each, they could not just modernize the graphics and controls but expand and alter their sequences of events to use them as reference points for a conflict set in the late 21st century, as rival factions try to weaponize historical memories. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, even when that work consists of ravings about Assassin’s Creed’s modern day plot, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe A story most players will probably miss If you didn’t know any of this, I’m not surprised. If you played the game and still didn’t catch it, I’m not a bit shocked. If Ubisoft has no plans to do more of this, I won’t fall down. Almost all of what I’ve described is optional and missable in Black Flag Resynced. I nearly missed it myself, as I planned for a breezy playthrough of an old Assassin’s Creed favorite. Instead, I found myself in a 40+ hour hunt for the “real” story, buried deeper in Resynced than any gold-filled chest. The story of 2096 is Resynced’s meta-story, told in two remote pockets of the game: 1) four optional playable “rifts” that players may find as they proceed through Resynced’s pirate fantasy , 2) in dozens of text files tucked three menus deep in the game’s barely-interactive Animus hub. Assassin’s Creed games have almost always had a meta-story about people in the 21st century (usually matching the game’s release year) and their connections to the main history portions you play. Those meta-stories have always been squeezed into the margins, though seldom as severely and as, uh, graphiaclly simple, as in recent games. Back in 2013, the modern-day exploits of you as an Abstergo Entertainment employee were prominent. They were portrayed via first-person portions that occasionally interrupted the third-person Kenway experience and could be explored for hours, complete with their own missions, side quests and puzzles. Resynced’s 2096 story—of Assassin “Watchers” vs. Abstergo/Tempar goons, of rogue AIs, of panicking scientists, of a woman wondering why her Animus-addicted husband is muttering about Mary Read (“What does he mean by Assassins?”), of a fight for the population’s hearts and minds via varying interpretations of Edward Kenway’s life choices—is mostly told through unlockable text files. The files are interesting. Offered via diary entries, intercepted chats and news reports, they present varied perspectives of a world in crisis. One set works as a narrative puzzle as it reveals the Rashomonic interpretations of a massacre, or was that a successful Assassin hit? Another favorite reveals the rising bitterness of a person who, through Edward Kenway’s journey, now shakes at the ignored evil around him. One surmises that Ubisoft is averse to putting the Assassin’s Creed’s meta-story in the way of more marketable pirate playgrounds and ninja/samurai epics. Instead, we get a better-than-nothing text-in-menus approach introduced in 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In Shadows, players unlocked the meta-story text files largely via time-gated missions that called on the user to kill X number of enemy type Y, clear three enemy castles, re-win a three-phase fighting tournament, and other grinds. Time restrictions on accessing these missions and unlocking the files meant it could take players months to access the full story in-game. But even in the most hardcore Assassin’s Creed hangouts, the fanbase instead seemed to throw up their hands rather than grind to keep up. In Resynced, Ubisoft has shown some mercy, diminishing the amount of new text files that are tied to timed grinds. Now, most of the text-based 2096 lore are associated with “data file” collectibles that players can find in the world. That includes a batch of written entries that explain a historical link between the feudal Japan era in Shadows and the piracy adventures in Black Flag. Players who explore a lot will find dozens of data files, though the game does not appear to offer any in-game tracker for finding each one. You just need to keep looking for them. As of this writing, I have most of them, but not all. I can’t find any full guide for them online. And even Ubisoft’s optional $5 microtransaction that reveals lots of items in-game does not appear to reveal the locations of the text files (at least the official description omits them from its collectibles list). That’s not a huge bother, because tracking the data files down compelled me to re-explore the waves and islands of Black Flag. That was a thoroughly pleasant task to do for the first time in a dozen years. I expect many players, though, will be content to wait for the files to be reproduced in an online AC wiki somewhere, the easier to read on a web page. It may not seem enticing to play a video game in order to gradually unlock pages of text to read. Why not, you may ask, just read a book, where they put the pages in order? For one, they’ve not tucked this latest installment of Assassin’s Creed’s meta saga in a book. I also enjoy the unordered delivery, the dawning comprehension of a story about 2096’s desperate people and questionable tech, which I glimpsed first at its middle, then the end, then the front, then other moments in between1. I am also enamored with the idea of the Assassin’s Creed games I’ve previously played, including Black Flag, being repurposed for an information war. The ideas in Resynced’s meta-story, which builds off characters and ideas in Shadows’ chunks of text, are strong. The potential of where they could go with it is exciting. As for the pirate stuff? Looks great, controls pretty well, is fun to play and oh so speedy in terms of how much of a good time you can have with each sit-down. It never gets old to chase a new shanty page across a rooftop, bombard a fort with upgraded mortars or use a diving bell to explore sunken wrecks (hats off to the team at Ubisoft Barcelona that worked on the underwater portions in Resynced; that team is now facing layoffs, such is the misery of modern gaming and oft-troubled Ubisoft). New pirate missions in Resynced involving new ally characters are brief, dramatic and add more to Edward’s story, even if the gameplay perks they provide barely enhance the gameplay. A new denouement for high-class pirate Stede Bonnet is affecting; a new hunt for Blackbeard’s treasure is a welcome extra moment. A new epilogue to hunt down a pirate killer, on the other hand, over-complicates Kenway’s character. The ending credits remain my favorite of any game I’ve ever played. Black Flag provides great source material. The revisit is well-made and a great sign of what could be. It is offered in a different wrapper that hints at an opportunity for more interesting remakes to come, should Ubisoft choose to pursue such treasures—and as we brace to resist or comply with an Abstergo future. 1 The messages that Edward Kenway finds in bottles tell another out-of-order story, one about a man reckoning with the strange memories and voices he’s heard in his head since he was a boy. That tale was also in the 2013 game and develops into one of Black Flag’s most compelling character arcs. In Resynced, it has lost its climax, because the bottle story previously paid off in the halls of the first-person Abstergo Entertainment, which is exclusive to the older game. An altered resolution, written by the 2013 game’s lead writer is fine, doesn’t invalidate the 2013 version, but makes for an inferior final note.

Jul 14 • 3:17 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news

Starlink's New V5 Dish: No Speed Boost, But It Trims Power Consumption, Weight

Starlink.com posts new support pages for the upcoming satellite dish, which is more compact and weighs less than the current V4 model.

Jul 14 • 2:54 PM EDT • Technology • pcmag.com

Christopher Nolan sparks fresh backlash after calling 'The Odyssey' criticism 'irrelevant'

Critics slammed Nolan's response to "The Odyssey" casting backlash involving Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, and the film's modern language choices.

Jul 14 • 2:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • foxnews.com

Extreme heat and health | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Extreme heat can be deadly. Experts discuss steps to stay cool and safe.

Jul 14 • 2:00 PM EDT • Health • hsph.harvard.edu

Fall sports updates and information

The fall sports season will be here before we know it! Here are some key summer details for students and families as we look forward to the coming season. Registration begins: High school football (grades 9-12): July 17 All other high school fall sports (grades 9-12): July 24 Modified football (grades 7-8): July 27 All other modified fall sports (grades 7-8): July 31 Please register via Final Forms. Sports physicals: All student-athletes interested in trying out for a fall sport must have an up-to-date physical submitted to Final Forms in advance of the first day of tryouts and practices. Families are encouraged to get a completed physical from their child's physician. If you are unable to get a physical from your child's physician, you can schedule a physical with Whitney Young's school-based health center by calling (518) 573-2556. Appointments will be available at Albany High School in room 4253 during July on the following dates: Thursday, July 16 between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 28 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Thursday, July 30 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Again, you must call (518) 573-2556 to schedule your appointment and receive instructions. Whitney Young does require paperwork that must be filled out by the child's parent or guardian in order for them to be seen by the provider. Tryouts & practices begin: High school football (grades 9-12): Aug. 17 All other high school fall sports (grades 9-12): Aug. 24 Modified football (grades 7-8): Aug. 27 All other modified fall sports (grades 7-8): Aug. 31 High school student-athletes are encouraged to take part in our open gym sessions during July and August in preparation for the fall sports season. Stay tuned for fall practice schedules and competition schedules, which will be posted on our Athletics page! If you have additional questions, please contact the Athletics Department at (518) 475-6310. Let's go Falcons!

Jul 14 • 1:12 PM EDT • Sports • albanyschools.org

The Google Images homepage will recommend photos even before you search

AI Overviews will also be able to generate images.

Jul 14 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Wichita Business Journal: Children's Mercy opens $18.3M outpatient pediatric clinic in northeast Wichita

By Jenna FarhatChildren's Mercy's first standalone clinic in Wichita is now open in a move that expands regional pediatric specialty healthcare.The 18,000 square-foot outpatient clinic, located on Greenwich Road near 29th Street, builds on the Kansas City-based pediatric health system's 14-year presence in Wichita. Children's Mercy will vacate i...

Jul 14 • 10:44 AM EDT • Business • news.childrensmercy.org

NBC host gives health update after previously revealing cancer diagnosis on air

She shared the news on her Instagram page on Sunday.

Jul 14 • 6:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • syracuse.com

Shell sells Indian wind and solar business for $1.8bn

Aditya Birla Renewables takes on Shell’s renewable assets in India as energy major continues to refocus on oil and gas

Jul 13 • 12:39 PM EDT • Business • ft.com

China-proofing European cleantech is a tricky business

Crude tariffs won’t be enough to promote EU renewable energy

Jul 13 • 7:31 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

Priscilla Presley's son, Navarone, 39, defends launching GoFundMe to start pizza business

Jul 12 • 6:42 PM EDT • Business • pagesix.com

Phoebe Bridgers Launches Itch.io Page With An Infinite Runner

The indie superstar breaks her hiatus with a RuneScape inspired single and a Subway Surfers style micro game

Jul 12 • 6:22 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com

At Family Science Night, Wonder Comes Before Answers.

BAR HARBOR—Family Science Night isn’t really about science. It’s about wonder. It’s about watching a five-year-old realize that the tiny creature under a microscope is a real living thing. It’s about a teenager discovering that the scientist explaining genetics or regeneration isn’t much older than they are. It’s about parents seeing curiosity spread across a child’s face the way excitement spreads across a crowd at a Fourth of July parade. For one evening, families realize that the laboratory isn’t some secretive place where knowledge is hidden behind white coats and closed doors. They learn that the lab is a place their neighbors work, their friends’ parents work, and it becomes a place where questions matter more than answers. It’s a place where wonder is the origin for knowledge. At the lab, children learn that it’s okay not to know. Adults remember that they once asked “Why?” about everything. Scientists are reminded why they fell in love with discovery in the first place. There are experiments, games, obstacle courses, and demonstrations, of course. But those are really just invitations—to touch, to explore, to laugh, to make mistakes, and to ask one more question. In a world that often rewards certainty, Family Science Night celebrates curiosity. And perhaps that’s its greatest gift. Long after the microscopes are packed away and the experiments are over, what families take home isn’t just a few new facts about biology. They take home the feeling that discovery belongs to everyone—that science isn’t something happening somewhere else by someone else. It’s simply what happens when people are given permission to wonder. A Family Science Night at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory is one of those rare community events where children and adults can experience science as something they do, not just something they read about. Hands on discovery allows hands-on learning and joy. Real scientists, some local, some scientist-interns (but still scientists) just in college make science real, approachable, and exciting. And there, complex ideas like forever chemical-filtration, DNA and so much more become not complex. Instead, they become fun. Summer fellows are challenged to explain cutting-edge biomedical research in ways a first-grader—and their grandparent—can understand. Past activities have explored gene expression, kidney function, axolotl regeneration, worms, microplastics, and phytoplankton through games and creative demonstrations. Though it’s called family night, you can also see adults going from station to station, exploring, learning together across ages. Family Science Night reflects the laboratory’s broader mission of breaking down barriers between researchers and the public, helping people understand how scientific discoveries relate to everyday life and the health of Maine’s environment. Family Science Night transforms a world-class research laboratory into a giant interactive classroom, where curiosity is encouraged, questions are celebrated, and families discover that science isn’t just something that happens in a lab—it’s an adventure anyone can join. About MDI Biological Laboratory For more than 125 years, MDI Bio Lab has been a center for training and research in comparative biology. In the last two decades its biomedical research has focused on aging, regeneration, and environmental toxins. The Laboratory houses 11 research groups staffed by an international team of world-class scientists and graduate students. It also leads a statewide network of colleges, universities and research institutions that collaborate to provide training, research experiences and financial support to help young Mainers play a bigger role in today’s biomedical revolution. Located on Maine’s rugged coast, the Laboratory’s 100+ acre campus houses research facilities, cottages and dorms that house visiting scientists and students. It is also home to MDI Bioscience, a subsidiary working to design innovative techniques to speed the drug discovery process. LINKS TO LEARN MORE NIH INBRE MDI BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY Photos: Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other. We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going. If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship. It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light. Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now. Thank you so much for being here. Founding member information can be found here. Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you. Subscribe Share Bar Harbor Story Share Leave a comment

Jul 12 • 8:18 AM EDT • Science • barharborstory.substack.com

Aaron Lewis says music industry turned its back on him because of his politics

Jul 11 • 11:58 PM EDT • Politics • pagesix.com

Max Holloway defeats Conor McGregor in minute with injury stoppage at UFC 329

Waianae native Holloway improves to 28-9

Jul 11 • 8:00 PM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com

Front page for July 12, 26

The Spokesman-Review front page for July 12, 26

Jul 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • spokesman.com

What’s really going on with mental health?

Changing terminology risks misleading policymakers and harming those in most need

Jul 11 • 12:00 AM EDT • Health • ft.com

Why new BBC series Evolution is a giant leap forward for science on TV

Adam Rutherford salutes a show that finally links the spectacle of natural history with the science that explains it

Jul 11 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

The science of making bordeaux better

From softer tannins to a fresher style, researchers and winemakers are reshaping one of wine’s most traditional regions

Jul 11 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

Gov. Jeff Landry and Mayor Helena Moreno trade barbs over money, politics and ATMs

What will it take for Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno to get on the same page?

Jul 10 • 6:51 PM EDT • Politics • nola.com

Palworld Exits Early Access With 72 New Pals and Pages of Update Notes

As promised previously, Palworld 1.0 has officially launched on Steam, bringing with it an absolutely gargantuan list of updates, features, and fixes. The update officially launches the game out of Early Access and adds 72 new pals to the game, bringing the total to 287—over 50 more than in the...

Jul 10 • 2:36 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com

Asha Sharma, the outsider handed the Xbox controls

Elevated to fix Microsoft’s struggling gaming division, she is making tough decisions about its future

Jul 10 • 12:29 PM EDT • Technology • ft.com

🚨 Sadio Mané announces his international retirement

A page is turning.A few days after Senegal’s cruel elimination in the round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup (2-3) against Belgium, Sadio Mané announced that he was bringing his Senegal career to an end...

Jul 10 • 7:10 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Bayer sells stake in contraceptives business to Apollo in €3bn financing deal

Sale will help German pharmaceuticals group to bolster its balance sheet after years of litigation over Roundup weedkiller

Jul 10 • 4:47 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

How AI changes the rules of engagement for sports viewers

Spectators will see more opportunity to move from pricey subscriptions and rigid schedules to more personalised feeds

Jul 10 • 12:00 AM EDT • Sports • ft.com

Leading UK research facility Diamond Light Source faces cost cuts

Particle accelerator used by both public and private sector scientists is part of 15% research centre savings

Jul 9 • 7:48 AM EDT • Science • ft.com

Google Play Store will look a little different the next time you open it

Google appears to be widely rolling out a few new UI changes for the Play Store, affecting the Games and Apps tabs.

Jul 8 • 3:01 PM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com

With Brendan Sorsby debacle still hanging over Big 12, conference tries to turn page to more pressing matters

Jul 8 • 8:42 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Meta tests ‘super sensing’ AI glasses that can capture every moment

Mark Zuckerberg’s hardware ambitions are edging into a new privacy fight over who gets recorded

Jul 8 • 12:00 AM EDT • Technology • ft.com

Palantir: too tied to Trump?

Pushback to the tech group’s politics may threaten the core of its $330bn business

Jul 8 • 12:00 AM EDT • Politics • ft.com

iRobot’s newest floor cleaner isn’t a robot

Do it yourself.

Jul 7 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Advantage, Wall Street? Why finance firms seek sports stars for advice

Novak Djokovic is the latest of many athletic recruits to financial services

Jul 7 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • ft.com

UAE’s Adnoc strikes $1bn deal for Shell’s South African fuels business

Acquistion of 580 service stations and other assets marks latest overseas expansion by Adnoc subsidiary

Jul 7 • 12:15 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

German business leaders warn Merz more is needed to prevent ‘lost decade’

Bosses welcome government’s reform package but say country is still at a competitive disadvantage

Jul 7 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • ft.com

White House report accuses Smithsonian museum of ‘extreme political activism’

The 162-page report on the National Museum of American History marks an escalation of President Donald Trump’s criticism of the Smithsonian museums.

Jul 6 • 10:37 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Smithsonian's National Museum of American History promotes 'extreme political activism,' WH report alleges

A 162-page White House report accuses the National Museum of American History of ideological capture and abandoning straightforward education.

Jul 6 • 9:05 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Money in politics, part 94

The US Supreme Court handed down a potentially transformative judgment on campaign finance last week

Jul 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • ft.com

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is blocked in 132 countries due to Sony's controversial PSN linking requirement – but its Steam page is still visible

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is blocked in 132 countries, once again due to Sony's controversial PSN linking requirements.

Jul 5 • 7:39 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

See iconic Sarasota photos from a bygone Florida era

From Ringling elephants and the Lido Beach Casino to downtown landmarks, these vintage photos capture the magic of old Sarasota.

Jul 5 • 3:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • heraldtribune.com

Returning to pre-Trumpian politics won’t save America

The opening of the Obama presidential library set off a wave of nostalgia for an era that is not coming back

Jul 5 • 12:00 AM EDT • Politics • ft.com

Front page for July 5, 26

The Spokesman-Review front page for July 5, 26

Jul 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • spokesman.com

Trump pokes fun at himself, roasts Obama in children's podcast

The 24-page book “Presidents Play!” features illustrations showing how presidents, despite their hectic schedule, unwind on the White House grounds

Jul 3 • 8:34 PM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com

Teams Make Contact With Spacecraft Set to Boost NASA’s Swift

Teams have successfully established communications with Katalyst Space’s robotic servicing spacecraft LINK.

Jul 3 • 11:59 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov

NASA, Partners Update Launch Date for Mission to Boost Swift

The launch of Katalyst's robotic servicing spacecraft LINK is now targeted for no earlier than Friday, July 3.

Jul 2 • 9:31 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Store Page Lists Multiple DLC And 'Story Expansion'

Placeholders or something more?

Jul 2 • 8:55 PM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com

Opinion | Trump administration move poses an existential threat to science

"The new threat can be found in the 412-page proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget," two professors emeriti write. "It seeks to put all federal funding decisions, for science and non-science, in the hands of political appointees with no expertise."

Jul 2 • 2:30 PM EDT • Science • startribune.com

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation store page lists multiple DLCs, including story expansion

Last month, we reported that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the final chapter of the acclaimed trilogy that is set to launch on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027, could receive DLC after release. While the game is still a long way off, new evidence has surfaced suggesting that may indeed be the case. According to EpicDB, a third-party tool that tracks...

Jul 2 • 11:06 AM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com

Launch of Swift Boost Mission Delayed, Teams Reviewing Data

The launch of Katalyst’s robotic servicing spacecraft LINK on Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket was postponed Thursday.

Jul 2 • 7:03 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov

Happy birthday, USA? At 250, nation may be too divided to celebrate

With President Trump stamping his imprint on the official commemoration, many Americans are struggling with how to separate politics from pageantry.

Jul 2 • 5:46 AM EDT • Politics • desmoinesregister.com

The Iran MOU is a mess. It still might work

The 14-point “Memorandum of Understanding” is among the oddest international agreements in recent memory. Short on detail, its two pages purport to grant significant up-front American concessions to Iran in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open before the war President Donald Trump started in February and now hopes to end.

Jul 2 • 4:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Sony is first console giant to stop making physical games

Move sparks angry response from some gamers

Jul 1 • 10:54 PM EDT • Technology • ft.com

Bayer Group to consolidate U.S. glyphosate business into distinct entity operating as Ruveon

Advances key component of Crop Science division’s Five-Year Framework strategy / Reinforces commitment to delivering trusted Roundup® brands and glyphosate products and services to U.S. customers

Jul 1 • 6:25 PM EDT • Business • bayer.com

Rumor: Metroid Ravenous leaked for Nintendo Switch 2

Metroid Ravenous has apparently been leaked for Nintendo Switch 2. A listing for the game supposedly surfaced within Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security system. The page has already been removed, but not before a screenshot was taken. Here’s a snapshot of the classification: The listing doesn’t provide any specific details about the game. However, the classification indicates 2026...

Jul 1 • 12:49 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com