Some of its amateur matches pull in bigger crowds than European leagues but are more of a spectacle than a pathway to the professional game, say experts

Michael Owen, a man who once quipped he had never drunk tea or coffee, isn’t known for his adventurous palate. Safe to assume, then, that the former England striker was out of his comfort zone sipping Roxburgh rose juice and eating chilli-wrapped rice noodle rolls during his recent visit to south-west China’s Guizhou province.

The 2001 Ballon d’Or winner dusted off his boots for a match in Rongjiang county, the birthplace of viral amateur football league Cun Chao, also known as the Village Super League. Scoring twice in a 4-3 loss for local side Rongjiang Niubi, Owen endeared himself to the thousands in attendance, even if some weren’t familiar with the former Liverpool and Real Madrid player.

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Davinson Sánchez looked to the heavens. Cucho Hernández trudged back to his teammates. And by the end, the rest of the Colombian team were on the grass as Switzerland danced, nearly alone in a sea of yellow. Switzerland had prevailed on penalties, 4-3, bringing an emotional end to more than two hours of tense, tentative, and ludicrously goal-free football in the World Cup last 16.

Switzerland advance to the quarter-finals for the first time since 1954, when that stage was the first in the knockout round of a Swiss-hosted tournament featuring a total of 16 teams. They will face a tall task to better that result, facing Lionel Messi and Argentina in Kansas City in four days’ time.

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Sanders, one of Platner’s earliest and most influential backers, is latest to call on him to withdraw from Maine race

The progressive senator Bernie Sanders called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing “very serious allegations” of sexual assault, hours before the embattled nominee faced another claim of sexual misconduct.

While Platner has denied the new allegations, reported by Politico, and later by the Washington Post, the initial report prompted a wave of prominent Democrats to urge him to stand aside as the party’s nominee in the consequential Senate contest.

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The test, which is being trialled by two NHS trusts, could replace the transvaginal ultrasound scan in some cases

Thousands of women could be spared having a painful intrusive exam for suspected cancer thanks to a new AI-powered blood test being trialled by the NHS.

Around 90,000 postmenopausal women a year in England are referred by their GP to be investigated for possible womb cancer because they are bleeding a lot.

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• Losses increase between 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons

• Transfer spend and lack of one-off sales account for rise

The combined pre-tax losses of Premier League clubs climbed from £135m in the 2023-24 season to £948m in 2024-25, according to Deloitte’s annual review of football finance.

This rise was attributed by Deloitte to transfer spending and the absence of significant profits from one-off sales. Net debt of Premier League clubs was up to £3.6bn in 2024-25, compared to £3.5bn the season before, Deloitte found.

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Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by immigration enforcement as he was looking to hire workers, his son says

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot ⁠a motorist in Houston on Tuesday during an attempt by officers to stop the man’s vehicle, according to ⁠an ICE statement.

The ⁠man shot ​to death was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who ⁠attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.

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• Novak Djokovic wins 7-6 (10), 3-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4)

• Serb lauds ‘one of the best matches in my career’

On Monday night The Odyssey, ­Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic about one man’s heroic quest, had its world premiere in London. And 24 hours later at Wimbledon, 15,000 fans on Centre Court witnessed a tennis equivalent. A ­rugged hero: Novak Djokovic. A mighty quest: the hunt for a record-breaking 25th grand slam title. There was an injury scare. Multiple shifts in momentum. And ­numerous times where the ­Centre Court crowd stood up and started punching the air at what they were watching.

It amounted to pure box office. And after five hours and 15 ­minutes of extraordinary tennis, it was ­Djokovic who was again left standing after defeating Felix Auger-Aliassime 7-6 (10), 3-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4).

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Reform UK leader says he has ‘never been angrier’ as he triggers byelection – but critics say he is ‘up to his neck in sleaze’

Flanked by union jack flags, with a spectacular view of the City of London behind him, Nigel Farage said he had “never been angrier”. In an address that was billed as a “statement on my future in public life”, the leader of Reform UK, the rightwing, anti-immigration party that remains ahead in most national polls but which has been dipping recently, said he would not tolerate any more of it.

“It seems to me that the establishment have now decided that they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means,” Farage said.

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Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

Trolley Graveyard, Central Pennsylvania,

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Samsung's chip division is projected to earn more in 2026 than it made across its previous 40 years in semiconductors, driven by soaring AI-fueled demand for memory and storage. The company's latest quarterly operating profit reportedly topped Nvidia's, making Samsung the world's most profitable tech company for the period. Tom's Hardware reports: Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand.

Samsung's DS division booked 53.7 trillion won ($35.1 billion) of the company's 57.2 trillion won in total operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, roughly 94% of the total, which is why the division's projection sits so close to Samsung's full-year consensus. "This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business," Kim Yong-Kwan told staff, scoping the claim to the chip business rather than the wider conglomerate. Further reading: Samsung Chip Workers To Get $340,000 Average Bonus In AI Boom

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FCC plans to roll back broadband label rules that require ISPs to itemize all passthrough fees. Under the proposal, providers could instead list a single "up to" amount for location-based charges. It would also allow ISPs to link to pricing labels rather than display them prominently, while eliminating machine-readable pricing files. Ars Technica reports: ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments. ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade. The Biden-era FCC updated the broadband-label rules to require that ISPs "itemize on the label (PDF) all discretionary monthly fees that the provider passes through to the consumer." The change drew protest from Comcast and other ISPs that complained bitterly about the complexity of listing all the hidden fees they had chosen to charge.

Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the Trump FCC has steadily whittled away at requirements imposed under Democrats. An order (PDF) released in draft form last week would eliminate the requirement to itemize passthrough fees and let ISPs list them in a single "up to" amount. The "up to" amount can include both government fees and fees charged by non-government entities such as owners of utility poles. "Rather than continuing to require providers to itemize 'passthrough fees' that can vary by location, we allow providers to display such fees in the aggregate, either as a maximum or 'up to' amount for the total fees applicable in any location where the service plan is offered, or as the exact total of such fees assessed in a particular location," the FCC draft order said.

The order to be voted on later this month includes a few other changes that will please ISPs and their lobby groups. ISPs will be allowed to provide links to price labels instead of displaying the full labels prominently on ordering pages and account portals, and will be allowed to stop making the price-label information available in machine-readable spreadsheets. The FCC is also relaxing the requirement that price information be available over the phone. The FCC said the change will "allow phone sales representatives to present label information conversationally, as a summary of key label fields, rather than require verbatim recitation."

The changes have been in the works since October 2025, when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to let the public submit comments on the proposals. The outcome of that process is the draft order, which will be voted on at the FCC's July 22 meeting and take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. There are many types of passthrough fees that ISPs will be able to stop listing individually and roll into the "up to" amount. The FCC defined the fees as follows, saying they include just about anything that isn't a tax [...]. Another planned change will eliminate a requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. The Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told the FCC that the archived labels provide crucial data about how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable labels are important for affordability research and information accessibility.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SOMA's cop supervisor takes a break from jailing drug addicts to ask a billionaire's nazi chatbot whether he can have a little genocide, as a treat:

Grok, what's the difference between right and wrong?

Last Sunday, San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey relaxed after what was, for most, a fun-packed SF Pride by repeatedly prompting xAI chatbot Grok to provide justifications for the killings of civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces. [...]

In lieu of actually addressing his critics online, of which there were many in the replies, Dorsey only had eyes for Grok, a chatbot that is notorious for being programmed to push false narratives about politics, history, and everything else according to the very transparent whims of xAI's trillionaire backer, Elon Musk.

Matt, are you OK? I really mean that. I'm not trying to be funny. Frankly, I tried to write something satirical about what was happening -- tried to find a lighter way through this -- but the more I dug in, the more concerned I started to feel.

Only a year ago, some backend overcompensation by Grok's puppeteers resulted in the bot compulsively spitting out conspiracies about "white genocide" in South Africa, praising Adolf Hitler, and engaging in Holocaust denial. To that point, AI researchers have warned that AI boosters' framing of chatbots as objective and reliable could be weaponized to push propaganda and even encourage people to commit violence.

So of course, watching an elected official openly using it to confirm his very loaded questions about the correctness of killing civilians is unsettling -- even terrifying.

In his most recent dealings with Grok, the supervisor's behavior is giving off the sketch vibes of a person antagonizing those around him while not even looking at them. Instead, it's almost like he's staring off into space and talking to someone who isn't there.

As it stands today, X is a platform that actively facilitates the turning of brains into pudding. And if this were some rando in the city posting, it would be easy to dismiss them as another soul lost to AI obsession. But Dorsey represents a major and heavily populated slice of San Francisco, including Mid-Market, Mission Bay, SoMa, and other neighborhoods. Supervisors like him write legislation and have a profound impact on the lives of the people in their districts and the city at large.

If this is what he's doing publicly, what is he asking Grok in private?

Despite this, Matt remains only San Francisco's second-worst weird dude named Dorsey.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

When they weren't rolling through fireworks they were trapping people near the Golden Gate Bridge.

Waymos were a key reason for the traffic snarl in the Presidio after Saturday night's foggy fireworks display on the Golden Gate Bridge. Videos and social media posts from people stuck in traffic show Waymos locked in giant lines, randomly blocking the road, and stuck in a roundabout.

A number of Waymos had to be towed after they lost battery power; the vehicles that could hold a charge made errors on the road that backed traffic up for blocks, bystanders said.

Fellow drivers acted like, well, drivers. "We realized people were getting out of their cars, yelling and screaming at these Waymos because there were no drivers," Dave Guingona, who was stuck in Presidio traffic for two hours, told NBC News. [...]

In the Mission, meanwhile, one Waymo drove into an intersection despite a large lit firework sitting in the middle of the road. Video taken inside the car by passenger Rose Peterson shows the firework's sparks flashing all around them as the Waymo takes a lazy left turn. A second angle shows Peterson's Waymo tip the firework over, which then shoots projectiles at cars, homes, and bystanders on the sidewalk. [...]

A second Waymo that encountered a firework was a different story, though: A vehicle that drove into a firework near the 1200 block of Connecticut Street in Potrero caught on fire, Waymo said. The Waymo was unoccupied and there were no injuries; the vehicle had to be removed by the San Francisco Fire Department and other city authorities, according to Bonelli.

These incidents raise serious concerns about autonomous vehicles, especially those operating during unusual traffic patterns that may require real decision-making by drivers. "Human drivers don't just drive. They are the captain of the ship and anything that can happen to it," AV expert Phil Koopman told Gazetteer in 2024. "Well, if you put a computer in charge and it's not capable of doing anything other than navigating traffic, who's the real captain of the ship?"

The office of San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins did not respond by press time to Gazetteer's questions about legal mechanisms that might hold Waymo accountable when its operational failures, including parking and moving violations, lead to blocked roads and other forms of extended congestion. Jenkins recently attempted to prosecute seven members of the so-called "Golden Gate 26" who blocked the bridge in 2024 during a protest and were charged with felonies for false imprisonment (for keeping people stuck in traffic) and obstructing a thoroughfare.

Meanwhile, Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has been a major ally for Waymo in its San Francisco expansion, did not mention the company in his statement regarding the July 4 pileups.

Mirroring these videos that were posted on oligarch-controlled social media sites for posterity...

I have so many posts about Waymos on fire that it almost deserves its own tag:

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Zwitserland heeft in de nacht van de dinsdag op woensdag in een zeer matige wedstrijd Colombia verslagen na strafschoppen.

Weer voor Rotterdam ☁️ - 08-07-2026 01:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 19.9°C · Bewolkt ☁️ | Min 20.0°C / Max 25.1°C

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 20.0°C, Max 25.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.6 hPa ↗️ +1.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 18.7 km/u (5.2 m/s), richting: → 288°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 19.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 2%, 🧭 1016.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↘ 307°
• 03:00: 19.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 2%, 🧭 1017.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.5 km/u (3.2 m/s), richting: ↘ 311°
• 04:00: 19.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1017.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↘ 314°
• 05:00: 19.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1017.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 309°
• 06:00: 19.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1017.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 300°
• 07:00: 19.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1017.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 319°
• 08:00: 19.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↘ 316°
• 09:00: 20.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1018.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↘ 317°
• 10:00: 20.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1018.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 309°
• 11:00: 20.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 4%, 🧭 1018.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↘ 302°
• 12:00: 21.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 4%, 🧭 1019.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↘ 317°
• 13:00: 21.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 4%, 🧭 1019.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.9 km/u (3.3 m/s), richting: ↘ 317°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• donderdag 09 juli: Min 19.3°C, Max 24.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1018.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 328°
• vrijdag 10 juli: Min 17.9°C, Max 25.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.1 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 14.8 km/u (4.1 m/s), richting: ↙ 41°
• zaterdag 11 juli: Min 17.8°C, Max 26.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1020.4 hPa ↗️ +2.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 12.7 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ↙ 56°
• zondag 12 juli: Min 16.5°C, Max 28.0°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1023.1 hPa ↗️ +2.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.7 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ↙ 52°
• maandag 13 juli: Min 17.6°C, Max 27.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1022.2 hPa ↘️ -0.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 14.5 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ↙ 39°
• dinsdag 14 juli: Min 17.4°C, Max 26.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1021.2 hPa ↘️ -1.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.5 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↙ 49°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 19.9°C (Bewolkt)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 19.6°C (-0.3°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↘ 306°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 21.2 km/h (5.9 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 71%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1016.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 19.3 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 05:32 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 22:01

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 30 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 7.3 μg/m³
• PM10: 11.1 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo

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We onderbreken het feest in het StamCafé voor militair geweld van een andere orde: Amerika heeft nieuwe, 'krachtige' aanvallen uitgevoerd op Iran. De aanvallen zijn volgens CENTCOM een reactie op de Iraanse aanvallen op drie commerciële schepen die door de Straat van Hormuz voeren. "Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire", oftewel: "De door Iran getoonde agressie was ongegrond, gevaarlijk en een duidelijke schending van het staakt-het-vuren." Op beelden op internet is te zien dat er fik is in Bandar Abbas. Ook waren er explosies te horen in Sirik. En die andere explosie ziet u binnenkort weer op de teller bij de pomp, als u 'm volgooit.

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Dr.Seuss At the Mountains of Madness read-along on YouTube [22m]. Unearthly horror for children. BONUS: H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu for Beginner Readers [14m].