As a widower and a newly single father of three, Jim Rogers was struggling. Then on a poolside holiday, he sat next to Tyler – and his life changed

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In the mid 90s, I was in the prime of my life. I was in my early thirties, married to my soulmate, Lorna, with three kids under three. We’d emigrated from our small town in Worcestershire in the UK to Perth, and life was wonderful. Then Lorna was diagnosed with melanoma. We returned to England and less than a year later she was gone. It was completely unbelievable, as though someone had just come along and smashed my life into a million pieces.

The following months were a blur: I was a grief-stricken widower and newly single parent struggling to keep the kids’ life on track and my own head above water. As time went on, it was obvious I wasn’t doing well and my parents insisted on treating me to a holiday in the sun. I didn’t want to go.

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As the sex doll industry grows and AI changes the products available, what does it mean to engage in any kind of relationship with a woman-shaped thing?

Two weeks ago, two distressed citizens stumbled across what they assumed was the mangled corpse of a woman, stuffed into a suitcase in a small town about three hours south of Sydney. They called the local police, who in turn issued a statement that a body in a suitcase had been found. The wider public waited sombrely for Australia’s tally of dead women to tick up by one.

But instead, a day later, after forensic analysis, it was determined that the woman in question wasn’t a woman at all. The “body” was that of a sex doll, marked with fake bruises, left to rot on a lonely dirt road. In Australia, as in the UK and some other European countries, it is not illegal to own a sex doll unless it resembles a child. Given the doll’s seemingly mature presentation, police investigations were called off.

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Bill Lee says he favors proposal to rename Nashville’s international airport after legendary country singer

Bill Lee, the Tennessee governor, on Friday said he favored a proposal to rename Nashville’s international airport after legendary country singer Dolly Parton, who died three days earlier at age 80.

In a statement, Lee said he and the managers of the airport in Tennessee’s capital city – where Parton resided – wanted to create “a lasting tribute to her indelible legacy and the generations of people she inspired”. He said he had spoken previously to the 11-time Grammy winner and her team, who were “touched by the idea”.

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Mike Ashley is not an aberration of British capitalism. He is the norm.

De Nederlandse vrouwen, al sinds 2014 heersend wereldkampioen, kunnen de nederlaag in de finale tegen Argentinië moeilijk bevatten. „Ik heb zelfs in de jeugd, bij Jong Oranje, niks verloren.”

NABLUS (ANP) - Bij het geweld van Israëlische kolonisten tegen Palestijnen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever zaterdag zijn ook meerdere journalisten van NBC News aangevallen en gewond geraakt. Dat meldt het Amerikaanse medium in een reconstructie op de eigen site.

Zaterdag vielen tientallen kolonisten twee dorpen bij Nablus aan, waarbij inwoners werden bekogeld met stenen en hun woning in werden gedreven. De Israëlische krijgsmacht (IDF) verklaarde later op X dat het had opgetreden om de groepen uit elkaar te drijven. Daarbij werden onder meer voertuigen geconfisqueerd.

NBC schrijft dat een vierkoppige videocrew na een interview met een Palestijn werd klemgereden door een auto met daarin meerdere kolonisten. Die sprongen met stokken uit hun voertuig, waarna ze begonnen met slaan en stenen wierpen. Zowel de geïnterviewde als de journalisten werden daarbij geraakt.

De Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu uitte zaterdag scherpe en voor hem zeldzame kritiek op het geweld van de kolonisten.

Wielrenner Tadej Pogačar heeft een hersenschudding, een gebroken sleutelbeen en een gebroken nekwervel overgehouden aan zijn valpartij in de achtste etappe van de Vuelta. Dat heeft zijn ploeg UAE Team Emirates zaterdagavond bekendgemaakt via X. De Sloveense wereldkampioen viel zaterdag in een vlakke etappe in de rode leiderstrui en moest de koers verlaten.

"Zijn conditie is stabiel en hij wordt grondig medisch onderzocht in het ziekenhuis", zegt de ploegdokter van UAE in het bericht op X. "Gelukkig zijn er geen andere grote blessures en geen neurologische uitval."

Vanwege zijn hersenschudding wordt Pogačar nog niet geopereerd aan zijn sleutelbeen. Voor het herstel van een sleutelbeen wordt doorgaans zes weken gerekend. Daarmee zou deelname aan het wereldkampioenschap voor de regerend wereldkampioen in gevaar komen.

Door het uitvallen van Pogačar heeft de Spanjaard Enric Mas de leiding in de Vuelta overgenomen. Mas besloot de rode leiderstrui uit respect voor de Sloveen niet aan te doen bij de podiumceremonie.

Rockstar Games has released a 26-minute "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI, due for release November 19th.
After one day the video had nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and when Netflix streamed the footage, "some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels," reports CNBC:


"Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered," the company told CNBC. Game streaming platform Twitch, where many viewers were posting their reactions, also experienced bandwidth issues when the trailer was released, according to analysts at Wells Fargo.

CNBC notes predictions the game could become one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time, while the Washington Post predicting it's "about to be the biggest pop media event of the year, if not the decade."

The data backs this up. The latest evidence arrived Thursday, when Netflix viewership surged for the long-awaited first look at gameplay footage, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm estimates "GTA VI" has already received about 4.6 million preorders.
Box office blockbusters like "The Odyssey" take weeks to hit $1 billion. "GTA V" famously did it in three days. Analyst firm Newzoo projects the new game could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion by the end of its launch week in November...

The influence of the series, created by Rockstar Games, extends beyond sales records. In 2025, "GTA V" accumulated 1.89 billion hours watched despite being a 12-year-old title, according to Stream Hatchet. Much of those hours are spent watching people role-play in "GTA Online," particularly through role-play servers managed by studio Cfx.re, which was acquired by Rockstar in 2023. By 2024, the studio said more than 20 million players used its platforms. GTA role-play involves players pretending to be cops, robbers, hapless retail workers or any functioning member of society within the online game... The game can lift up music sales and streams. Tom Petty's 1989 song "Love is a Long Road" saw stream numbers increased by nearly 37,000 percent on Spotify after it was the soundtrack to the debut "GTA VI" trailer in 2023, according to Universal Music Publishing Group.
Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that GTA 5 is still in the top five bestselling video games every year, despite being released 13 years ago, reports CNBC:

The response to Thursday's gameplay debut indicated that leaks of the content in advance would not impact the launch commercially, he continued. Rockstar Games, which makes the GTA franchise, had called the leaks "heartbreaking...."

The GTA 6 preview follows a mixed reaction from players to the news that GTA 6 would only be released as a digital download, with no physical disc. The alleged source of the leaked content has claimed the leaks were a protest over Rockstar's release strategy, and Sony's plan to end to new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Speaking on the last earnings call on Aug. 7, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to the consumer, adding that its business was "well over 90% digitally distributed." Data from Circana shows the sale of physical game discs in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.