We need an enlightened US president to make the case for global AI regulation. Donald Trump is the exact opposite of what is needed

When I am woken by the sound of my dog whining, I understand that she is hungry and wants me to get up. When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t consider its needs. It is following an instruction to rouse me at a certain time but it doesn’t care if I stay in bed. It doesn’t try to get me up by other means. The dog, on the other hand, will go to plan B. She barks.

This capacity for autonomous action was once a difference between animals and machines. AI has blurred the line. Advanced models devise their own strategies to reach a goal. The task might be defined by a human master, but the machine weighs its options for delivery. It can make its own choices. Given rules, it can break them.

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It looked like it was gone forever, but Jason Sudeikis’s hugely popular show returns with a premise that’s all twee nonsensicality. If you love messages of positivity and togetherness, you’ll be thrilled

Having transported a flailing AFC Richmond to the upper echelons of the Premier League with his wholesome, folksy and highly simile-reliant management style, the finale of Ted Lasso’s third season saw our titular coach return to the US to spend more time with his son in Kansas. At the time (2023), the general impression was that we were waving goodbye for good. But could this intensely American protagonist really do the most British thing of all and bow out at the height of his sitcom’s popularity? Nope. Last year it was announced that its star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis had caved to market forces and was reprising his colossally popular alter ego.

It was the logical thing to do: the 11-time Emmy-winning show was the most-watched streaming original of 2023. Not that logic features heavily in this fourth season. Before we discover how Ted has been lured back to south-west London, we find out what he’s been up to in the interim. Did he parlay his success into US soccer? Return triumphantly to college football? Sit back with his millions and rest on his laurels? Nope, nope and nope again. Instead, he’s working in his local supermarket, warmly greeting his customers by name, providing moral guidance to younger colleagues and generally radiating his trademark howdily-doodily energy. Why? Because he’s a good man without ego who loves to connect and make a positive difference in his community! This is Ted Lasso we’re talking about!

Ted Lasso is on Apple TV

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Spanish full-back on moving on from the Emirates Stadium, his elation at his old club ending their title drought, and how Mikel Arteta has helped prolong his career

One day when he was 18 or 19, still near the start of his journey, Héctor Bellerín got a call from Mikel Arteta inviting him round. He remembers asking lunch or dinner but this was neither. “When I arrived that afternoon, he was sitting with a financial adviser and they started to ask: ‘How much do you spend on this?’ ‘How much do you spend on that?’. I was young, I’d just started to make money and spend money: on clothes, cars, the things we all do when you’re not really aware. I was pitching low. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, but I left with a lesson in humility and affection.

“Mikel was the first player who showed me that I was important to him, that I mattered. He demonstrates real care, if not through a hug. I said: ‘Thank you.’ He said: ‘If you do the same for a teammate one day I’m happy.’ The legacy he left is one I try to pass on so young players feel looked after and that’s an experience that defines Mikel very well.”

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Plus: worst-ever penalty shoot outs, poachers turned gamekeepers … and footballers donating antiques?!

• Mail us with your all of your questions and answers

“Malachi Fagan-Walcott’s final game of last season was for York City against Rochdale in the National League. His first competitive game of 2026-27 season was for Hearts against Sturm Graz in a Champions League qualifier. Has a player ever made a bigger leap in competitive levels between consecutive club games?” asks Tom Reed.

Does a jump from the Welsh League to the FA Cup count as a bigger leap? Probably not, but this was an FA Cup semi-final, rather than a Champions League qualifier, and it’s a cracking yarn regardless. “I’ll nominate Gary Plumley,” writes Russell Connor. “Gary made almost 200 appearances for Newport County in four separate spells over the course of a decade but by 1987 he had effectively retired and was running a wine bar while making occasional appearances for Ebbw Vale in the Welsh League.

Steve Baines, the only referee in the English professional leagues to have had significant experience as a player.

Dick Jol, who refereed the 2001 Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Valencia.

Ben Haverkort, who as a player received 73 yellow cards and six reds, many for verbally abusing referees.

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Murphy is back on form with this gorgeously curated, shot and scored adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel – about a serial killer stalking privileged LA teenagers

The world can finally begin to hope again. It looks as though Ryan Murphy has pulled out of his dive and is beginning to find his glorious groove again. The uber-showrunner reached a nadir last year with All’s Fair, a legal drama that was so bad it was existentially awful, garnering a number of rare, zero-star reviews (including mine) and which has duly been commissioned for a second series.

But after All’s Fair came The Beauty. Which was chaotic and underdeveloped but fun. And then there was Love Story, about the short lives and love of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette, which was pitch-perfect, properly good trash. And now there is The Shards, Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 80s-set metafictional/autobiographical novel of the same name. I have not read the book. An enfant terrible’s reminiscences are too often simply terrible and I was exhausted by the very idea. But a TV version? Run through the Murphytron? That sounds like a very good idea – and so it has proved. Theirs is a marriage made in pop-culture heaven.

The Shards is on Disney+

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• World No 2 pulls out of ATP Masters 1000 event in Cincinnati

• Spaniard has been sidelined since April with ongoing wrist injury

Carlos Alcaraz has pulled out of the Cincinnati Open due to an ⁠ongoing wrist injury, casting fresh doubts over the Spaniard’s fitness ahead of his ⁠US Open title ⁠defence this ​month.

The seven-times Grand Slam champion has been sidelined since withdrawing from the Barcelona Open second round in April ⁠but had been set to return at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Cincinnati, which he won last ⁠year.

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Company acquired in deal involving Affinity Partners, a firm run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner

Electronic Arts, the maker of video games such as The Sims, Madden NFL and Battlefield, has been bought by Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund and a group of investors for $55bn (£41bn).

The company announced the completion of the deal on Tuesday evening, only days after the EU gave its approval, the final regulatory green light needed.

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Fabio Bruna posted a photo:

Waterhuishouding in Nederland, Stompwijk.Vullen van de Driemanspolder, omdat het water daar anders te zoet wordt.

Fabio Bruna posted a photo:

Knekelveld in het natuurgebied ’t Vogelhoff.

Boeing on Tuesday celebrated the certification of its latest passenger plane, the 737-7 MAX, 15 years after it announced the type and seven years after the first model rolled off the production line. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certified the plane on Monday, saying its decision “reflects years of sustained work to resolve complex technical issues and complete a thorough review of the airplane’s design and supporting safety analyses.” Many of the 737-7’s problems were also present in the 737-8 MAX, which suffered fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 due to faulty software. Boeing built the first 737-7 in 2018 and planned for it to enter commercial service a year later. After the 737-8 crashes, regulators grounded the plane while Boeing worked to fix it, leaving the aerospace company without resources to work on the 737-7. Boeing also had little incentive to prioritize the 737-7, as only Southwest Airlines wanted it at that time. The craft’s limited appeal is due to its unusual configuration, which sees it capable of carrying 172 passengers up to 3,850 nautical miles. That makes it the smallest model in the 737 family, while also enjoying the longest range. Boeing pitched the 737-7 as larger and longer-legged than the Airbus A319neo, the smaller version of the A320. The littlest 737 is also the closest thing Boeing has to a regional jet, the class of aircraft with up to 150 seats. Airlines sometimes use long-range regional jets to explore new routes. Airbus and Embraer dominate the market for such planes. The 737-7 gives Boeing a possible competitor that airlines may find appealing as it can be adapted to other missions. US airline Allegiant signed up to buy the model in 2022. As Boeing worked to get all of its 737 MAX models back in the air, it found problems specific to the 737-7 – notably an issue with anti-icing systems that could cause excess heat to build up on engine inlets. Boeing sorted that and other issues out to the FAA’s satisfaction, and is now ready to sell the 737-7. It may be ready to crank them out at quite a rate, too, as its most recent shipment data revealed it built 129 737s last quarter. It’s been a good few weeks for Boeing, which in July announced it had completed the final certification flight of the 737-10, the largest of the MAX generation planes. The FAA now gets to decide if Boeing got it right. The company’s major piece of unfinished business is now the 777X, the new version of its largest widebody. Boeing planned to deliver the 777X in 2020, but myriad complications saw it miss that deadline and the company now hopes the new plane will fly in 2027. Even if Boeing does win approval for the 777X next year, it will have a problem with the type because it built over 20 test aircraft using designs the FAA didn’t approve. Those planes will need significant modifications before airlines can put them into service. Carriers are understandably reluctant to buy those planes, leaving Boeing with a potential fleet of duds it can’t sell. The American plane-maker can at least bask in the satisfaction of seeing its great rival Airbus announce tests of folding wings for its future planes, as Boeing used that design in the 777X. ®

CINCINNATI (ANP) - Tennisser Carlos Alcaraz heeft zich vanwege zijn polsblessure teruggetrokken van het masterstoernooi van Cincinnati, dat op 13 augustus begint. Dat meldt tennisorganisator ATP in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag. Eerder leek de Spanjaard nog zijn rentree te zullen maken in Cincinnati, toen hij half juli op de deelnemerslijst verscheen.

De 23-jarige tennisser is sinds eind april geblesseerd. Daardoor miste hij Roland Garros en Wimbledon. Op de wereldranglijst staat hij nog altijd tweede. Begin dit jaar won hij de Australian Open, het enige grandslamtoernooi waaraan hij meedeed. Het is nog onzeker of Alcaraz op tijd fit is voor de laatste grandslam van het jaar. De US Open begint op 30 augustus.

Tennisser Carlos Alcaraz heeft zich vanwege zijn polsblessure teruggetrokken van het masterstoernooi van Cincinnati, dat op 13 augustus begint. Dat meldt tennisorganisator ATP in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag. Eerder leek de Spanjaard nog zijn rentree te zullen maken in Cincinnati, toen hij half juli op de deelnemerslijst verscheen.

De 23-jarige tennisser is sinds eind april geblesseerd. Daardoor miste hij Roland Garros en Wimbledon. Op de wereldranglijst staat hij nog altijd tweede. Begin dit jaar won hij de Australian Open, het enige grandslamtoernooi waaraan hij meedeed. Het is nog onzeker of Alcaraz op tijd fit is voor de laatste grandslam van het jaar. De US Open begint op 30 augustus.

OOSTRUM (ANP) - Het blijft moeilijk in te schatten hoe lang het nog duurt voordat de brand in een natuurgebied bij het Limburgse Venray onder controle zal zijn. De weersomstandigheden zijn momenteel redelijk gunstig, zegt een woordvoerder van de veiligheidsregio.

Hoewel het met 30 graden warm wordt, blijft de windrichting gelijk: die blijft waaien uit het zuidoosten. Dat maakt het blussen makkelijker. Een dag eerder zorgde de van richting veranderende wind ervoor dat de brandweer telkens moest bijstellen met blussen.

Dinsdagavond dreigde onweer met windstoten, maar dat is uitgebleven. De brand is binnen de zogeheten stoplijnen gebleven en breidt niet uit.

Vanwege ontplofbare oorlogsresten in het gebied moet de brandweer wel meer afstand houden tot het vuur. "Dat is vervelend maar voor onze inzet maakt het niet zoveel uit", zegt de woordvoerder. De Explosieven Opruimingsdienst Defensie (EOD) is ingeschakeld vanwege munitie uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog die mogelijk nog in het gebied ligt.

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Ja dit hebben we inmiddels echt al heel vaak gehoord. En tot nu toe verliep het dan steeds als volgt: uiteindelijk bleek dat beide partijen akkoord waren gegaan met verschillende deals die sleutel-elementen uit het concept van de tegenpartij misten. Of er was inderdaad even een principeakkoord, waarna er toch weer een nieuwe militaire vergeldingscyclus ontstond en het einde snel opnieuw zoek was. Afijn, tegen die achtergrond schreef Axios vier uur geleden:

"De VS, Iran en Oman naderen een voorlopig akkoord over de heropening van de Straat van Hormuz, waarbij de VS mikken op een aankondiging op woensdag; dit melden twee regionale bronnen en een Amerikaanse functionaris. (...) De deal, waarover al enkele weken wordt onderhandeld, is gericht op het hervatten van het staakt-het-vuren tussen de VS en Iran en het opnieuw opstarten van de onderhandelingen over een nucleair akkoord. (...) Volgens twee regionale bronnen voorziet de besproken overeenkomst in een tijdelijke regeling van 60 dagen tussen Oman en Iran in de Straat van Hormuz, die verlengd zou kunnen worden."

Nou, we gaan het wel weer meemaken maar alles voelt als nieuwe grondmarmotdag, net als in Gaza overigens. Want opnieuw presenteerde Trump met Trumpiaanse trompet dat zijn 'Board of Peace' een historische overeenkomst had bereikt ter de volledige ontwapening van Hamas. Klinkt geweldig, maar van de twee betrokken partijen is Hamas geen onderdeel van die Board of Peace en Netanyahu zegt nu dat hij niets van de deal wist, het niet hun concepttekst is, er nooit mee akkoord gegaan te zijn en dat ze de tekst nu bestuderen. 

Netanyahu was 4 dagen muisstil over de kwestie omdat hij Trump niet in verlegenheid wil brengen. En opmerkelijk genoeg lijkt hij de video enkel in het Hebreeuws en enkel op Facebook te plaatsen, in de hoop het een interne verkiezingsaangelegenheid (aanstaande 27 oktober) te houden, in plaats van dat hij Trump internationaal voor paal zet. De Times of Israel schrijft: 

"Hoewel de Board of Peace aangaf dat Israël geen troepen zou hoeven terugtrekken tot voorbij de oorspronkelijke 'Gele Lijn' zolang Hamas niet op zijn minst begint met het overdragen van zijn wapens, stelde Netanyahu dat de Israëlische strijdkrachten zich helemaal niet zullen verplaatsen, nu zijn verkiezingscampagne op gang komt. "De [Amerikaanse] president [Donald] Trump denkt – of zijn team denkt – dat ze Hamas zover kunnen krijgen dat de organisatie zich ontwapent en Gaza demilitariseert. We bekijken de zaak. Ze hebben ons een conceptvoorstel gestuurd. Wij zijn daarmee niet akkoord gegaan. Het was niet ons voorstel. We hebben onze opmerkingen teruggestuurd," zei Netanyahu in de videoverklaring."

Matige dag voor planvertrouwers. 

Naschrijft 08:33 - CNN schreef gisteren wat CBS News op 25 juli al schreef, namelijk dat Amerikaanse onderscheppingsmunitie op wel heel lage voorraad staat. "The US military has exhausted nearly 80% of its interceptors for a key missile defense system as senior US military commanders are warning that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile is “dangerously low,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Stockpiles of key air defense systems have been particularly depleted during the war with Iran. The US military has burned through nearly four-fifths of its THAAD missile inventory compared to pre-war numbers and roughly half of its Patriot interceptors since the start of the war, according to two sources familiar with the latest inventory report. The disclosure of the low THAAD inventory has not been previously reported."

Netanyahu's Hebreeuwse Facebookvideo over Trumps ontwapeningsplan voor Hamas

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Developed a campaign kit for Sulwhasoo's 2026 First Care Activating Serum & Eye Cream campaign.

Frederick A sends us a bit of null checking code, and offers us a better solution.

class ConferenceService
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Checks if conference is active
	/// </summary>
	public bool IsCalling()
	{
		try
		{
			return m_ConnectionService.Core.State.IsWebRTCConnected;
		}
		catch
		{
			return false;
		}
	}
}

This is for a web conferencing tool, which uses WebRTC to set up connections between clients in the chat. This function checks if the chat is active by checking a IsWebRTCConnected flag. But as you can see in this code, that flag is on a long chain of objects, some of which may not exist when this function is called. Thus, we wrap the whole thing up in a try/catch. If anything throws an exception, we know we can just return false. It's probably fine.

The obvious and easy fix, which Frederick proposes, is to use the C# coalescing operator: ?. m_ConnectionService?.Core?.State?.IsWebRTCConnected ?? false would solve this problem just fine.

That said, I wouldn't say that's a true fix. We're talking about a state machine here, though admittedly with two states under discussion (connected/disconnected), though there are probably more not being checked here. This information should be managed via a state machine, not via boolean flags stuffed deep in an object chain. The fix isn't a WTF, but it definitely hints at a better way to manage all of this. Now, my solution likely requires a lot more modification and code changes than what we have here, so I'm not suggesting anyone go off and rewrite this from scratch just to have a cleaner way of managing state. But folks definitely should think more carefully about how they manage state.

Despite a record-breaking $70,000,000 in PAC attack ads, endorsements from everyone from the governor to Obama, the 4-time incumbent senator Haley Stevens has lost the 2026 primary.

In one of the most public and high-stakes elections in modern history, Abdul El-Sayed has won the democratic senate primary election against the incumbent Haley Stevens. Stevens out-spent her challenger roughly 10-1 through PACs, breaking records for the most money spent by AIPAC on a single candidate and the most expensive democratic primary ever, received endorsements from the current and former governor of Michigan, several establishment democrat senators, repeatedly received endorsements from Obama in previous runs... But all the king's horses and all the king's men and a truckload of the king's money couldn't put Haley Stevens back in the senate again. An establishment democratic candidate fighting this hard, using this much dark money, pulling this many names, and still losing to a grassroots campaign, is an unprecedented event in the democratic party's modern history and another strong signal of the rise of the DSA's sway against the DNC. (Abdul is not a member of the DSA, but was endorsed by many major players in the party.) The race was closer than expected from recent polling, however. What was supposed to be an open and shut case went on long enough for this post to be made the middle of the night.