• American’s revival continues after controversy 12 months ago

• Rory McIlroy still in contention despite ‘bit of a battle’ on back nine

Everyone was chasing one man on a windswept Friday in the Hamptons as Wyndham Clark continued his extraordinary revival, posting the lowest 36-hole score ever recorded in a US Open at Shinnecock and carrying a four-shot lead into the weekend.

The 2023 champion backed up his opening-round 64 with a one-under 69 to reach seven under par, breaking the previous halfway record of six under set by Phil Mickelson and Shigeki Maruyama in 2004. Clark’s total left him four strokes clear of Matt Fitzpatrick, Xander Schauffele, Sam Stevens and Tom Kim at three under, while Collin Morikawa hurled himself into contention with the day’s low score of 65 to sit alone at two under on a sun-splashed but blustery afternoon in Southampton.

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• US qualify for knockout stage after victory over Australia

• Former Sweden striker says Americans are contenders

• US men’s team’s last semi-final came in 1930

After two wins in two to start the World Cup, the US have gained a high-profile supporter: Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Asked on Fox’s postgame broadcast whether he thinks the co-hosts can win the World Cup, the Swede offered a simple answer: “Yes.”

Asked about Ibrahimovic’s comments after Friday’s 2-0 win over Australia, US players were uniform in their response: Sure, why not?

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Amazon MGM has dropped Luca Guadagnino's nearly completed Sam Altman biopic Artificial and is seeking another distributor for the film. The move comes months after Amazon expanded its multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, fueling speculation about a potential conflict given the movie's reportedly unflattering portrayal of Altman. The Independent reports: Artificial would have marked the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director's third Amazon film, following the critically acclaimed Zendaya-led tennis romance Challengers (2024) and the academic scandal drama After the Hunt (2025), starring Julia Roberts. The new movie is said to chronicle the brief period when Altman was abruptly ousted as OpenAI's CEO in 2023 and subsequently rehired. Monica Barbaro and Ike Barinholtz star alongside Garfield as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while Yura Borisov, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O'Dowd, Mark Rylance and Margo's Got Money Troubles breakout Thaddea Graham round out the cast.

It is unclear exactly why the film was dropped, but according to Variety, the news came after it had already undergone positive screen tests. An early viewer told the publication that the film's portrayals of Altman and newly minted trillionaire Musk are the two characters audiences would "like the least." It was also reported that Amazon had already seen every early iteration of the script before Guadagnino was hired to direct. Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have developed a high-profile friendship over the years. In fact, the former was in attendance at Bezos's wedding to Lauren Sanchez, which took place in Venice, Italy, in 2025. In recent months, the two have continued to deepen their professional partnership that began in 2015, when Amazon became one of OpenAI's first investors. Ten years later, the companies closed their first major deal in November 2025, allowing the ChatGPT maker to run its systems on Amazon's U.S. data centers.

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Norway will largely prohibit generative AI use for elementary kids ages 6 to 13 beginning with the new school year, while allowing limited, teacher-supervised use for older students. The government says the restrictions are intended to prevent children from skipping foundational reading, writing, and mathematics skills amid declining test scores. Reuters reports: Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. Using AI increases the risk that young children skip important steps in their education, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a press conference on Friday. "The most important thing in school is that our children learn to read, write and do mathematics," Stoere said, adding that the new standards will be imposed from the new school year beginning in late August.

Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can cautiously adopt tools under teachers' supervision, the government said. In upper secondary education, from ages 17 to 19, students should learn to use AI appropriately so that they are prepared for further education and work, it added. In a related statement, the Norwegian government also said it would propose legislation to fund the use of more books in classrooms, reversing the trend towards computer tablets.

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No Medicare[1], no family, no visa — these are the babies Australia doesn't count. For the Pacific Islander women who harvest the fruit and vegetables that stock Australia's supermarket shelves, motherhood here can mean injury, debt, secrecy and fear. The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme is a scheme whereby people from Pacific Islands can get work visas to come to Australia, mostly (but not only) for work harvesting fruit/vegetables. The work visas are tied to a specific employer, which means that if someone leaves their visa-employer, they have to either transfer their visa to another participating employer (non-trivial as there are costs for the employer and not all employers are eligible to sponsor a PALM visa), or they are in breach of their visa conditions and have to leave Australia.

If a worker under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme becomes pregnant while working for their visa-employer, their healthcare costs are covered. But if they leave that employer to move to a different employer without moving their visa to the new employer (common reasons for leaving the original employer include less hours of work than promised; a lower rate of hourly pay than promised; sexual harassment by an employer or by a coworker; unsafe working conditions; and unsafe worker accomodation), and breach their visa conditions, no healthcare costs are covered. [1] Medicare in Australia is NOT the same as Medicare in the US. Medicare in Australia is not means-tested, it is for all Australian citizens and permanent residents regardless of income. Medicare Australia is a rebate for seeing any doctor - depending on what any individual doctor charges, Medicare may cover the cost of an appointment in full, or cover between 50% and 80% of the cost of an appointment.

I have. Now this one proves me wrong. from kottke.org: Telescope Ranchers. Rockwood, Texas is home to a unique business, Starfront Observatories. Owner/operator Bray Falls hosts hundreds of other people's telescopes in perfect conditions — ultra-dark skies (Class 1 on the Bortle scale), clear weather, and fast internet — so astrophotographers from around the world can run their scopes and make observations completely from their computers.

Out in the middle of nowhere Texas, a young astrophotographer is running one of the largest telescope ranches on Earth. Stargazers from around the world ship their gear to Bray Falls, who tends 550 telescopes (and counting) on 40 acres outside Brady, the geographic heart of Texas. Customers control the scopes from a laptop anywhere on the planet for as little as 99 dollars a month. We dropped by Starfront Observatories on a perfect dark sky night to see how the operation actually works. https://starfront.space/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN48vEqaQs8 As one commenter put it: "Sooo....the stars at night really are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas?"

Osiris Pictorials has added a photo to the pool:

Hirado, Nagasaki
Japan

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Komoro, Nagano, Japan

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Shadows and Water

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KYIV (ANP) - De Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky geeft Belarus, een bondgenoot van Rusland, een week de tijd om zijn signaalversterkers in de buurt van de Oekraïense grens weg te halen. Volgens Zelensky gebruikt het buurland die apparatuur om Rusland te helpen bij het uitvoeren van aanvallen op doelwitten in zijn land. "Als ze de apparatuur niet weghalen, dan doen we het zelf."

De Oekraïense president zei dit tijdens een persconferentie in Kyiv, tijdens een bezoek van de Hondurese president Nasry 'Tito' Asfura. De president had het over relaissystemen die op communicatietorens in twee Belarussische grensregio's zijn geïnstalleerd. Het Russische leger zou de signaalversterkers gebruiken bij aanvallen op Oekraïne vanaf Belarussisch grondgebied.

"Als president Aleksandr Loekasjenko echt geen deel wil uitmaken van de oorlog, laat hem dan die apparatuur weghalen en uitschakelen", aldus Zelensky.