Month: July 2026

Tariff refunds are squeezing the federal budget. The US paid out $26 billion more in refunds than it collected in June after a February Supreme Court decision struck down most of the Trump administration’s levies, contributing to a widening $120 billion monthly deficit. The White House justified tariffs partly as ...

California’s case against Paramount landed yesterday with a whimper, not a bang. Rob Bonta and 11 other attorneys general argue that a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would hurt competition in three markets: general film distribution, blockbuster film distribution, and cable TV. Paramount plans to contest Bonta’s definition of “blockbuster” films ...

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called for government oversight and, potentially, a mandated pause for frontier AI research, warning that a race-to-the-top dynamic is exacerbating the technology’s risks. AI will herald “a new age for humanity,” Hassabis wrote, greater than the Industrial Revolution, but only if deployed responsibly. As it ...

The image of the national icon has been ever present through this World Cup, in banners and songs and memory. It adds a fresh layer to Wednesday’s semi-final Not two minutes after his side’s dramatic, extra-time quarter-final victory over Switzerland on Saturday, the Argentina head coach, Lionel Scaloni, was already ...

Rapid scientific progress has given us the tools to stop time more convincingly than ever – but lurking behind these claims is the same fear of ageing Andrea holds a PhD in literature and works for a nonprofit in Dallas. She’s in her late 40s and tells me that the ...

El Niño climate phenomenon heating waters off Mexico but incidents with humans remain a rarity California is set to see one of its sharkiest summers in a decade, with large numbers of juvenile great whites already on a reverse vacation from the warm waters of Mexico to cooler pastures along ...

After the Guardian’s music critics chose their best of the half-year, we asked you for your picks – from Brian Jackson and Arlo Parks to Maya Hawke, Flea and more • The best albums of 2026 so far• ‘I saw it seven times in the cinema’: readers’ favourite films of ...

If you listen to the 404 Media podcast by now you probably realized that Joe and I are a little obsessed with a game called Marathon. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve played it for almost 300 hours since it was released in March. But as much as we’re enjoying ...

Freya Holmér’s had this idea in her head for a long time—Tetris, but the whole board rotates. The game developer and Unity tool maker started making the idea real and built out a prototype. Holmér posted a 50-second clip of it to social media in mid-March and asked: “Is this ...

Trump drops a 24-hour-old vow to charge cargo ships for using the Strait as the US continues its battle to break Iran’s hold on the waterway. ...