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Daniel Barker Flores Receives the 2026 Gabriel A. Almond Award for “Coercion, Capital, and The Latin American City: Understanding Territorial Control and Governance in Marginalised Urban Communities” -

The Gabriel A. Almond Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation in the field of comparative politics. Citation from the Award Committee: We are pleased [...]

Jul 22 • 2:00 PM EDT • Politics • politicalsciencenow.com

Nestle nears sale of water business stake at close to €5 billion valuation, FT reports

Private equity firm ‌Platinum Equity is nearing a deal to acquire about a 50% stake in Nestle's ​European water business in a ​transaction that would value the joint ⁠venture at almost €5 billion ($5.71 billion), the ​Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Jul 22 • 9:49 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

American scientists see prosecutions as part of federal campaign against them

Federal officials charged two virologists they stopped en route from an African disease outbreak with violating import rules. But scientists tell KFF Health News the inactivated samples they carried posed no threat to the public, and they characterize the arrests as part of a government harassment campaign.

Jul 22 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • cnn.com

China, immigration, drugs: Behind US policy in Latin America

Jul 20 • 12:03 PM EDT • Politics • aljazeera.com

Disability inclusion in health systems and emergency management remains uneven across Latin America and the Caribbean, new report finds

Washington, D.C., July 20, 2026 (PAHO) — Despite progress in laws, policies and programs aimed at advancing the rights of persons with disabilities across Latin America and the Caribbean, many continue to face barriers to accessing health services and emergency care on an equal basis with others, according to a new report released by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Network of Persons with Disabilities and Their Families (RIADIS).

Jul 20 • 12:00 PM EDT • Health • paho.org

UCLA Health Training Center

The UCLA Health Training Center is the Los Angeles Lakers’ LEED Platinum home for basketball and business operations in El Segundo, California.

Jul 20 • 11:39 AM EDT • Health • hok.com

Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com

Sonoma County Latinas building community, business opportunities through networking

Marcos Suarez, Sonoma County’s Business Diversity Program Manager, said it’s great that local groups like Latinas Emprendedoras and Eventos con Amigas are benefiting the local economy, because starting a business is never easy.

Jul 20 • 9:04 AM EDT • Business • pressdemocrat.com

Science can serve dark as well as light

I’m not sure how many of you are watching “Star City,” Apple TV’s spin-off of its “For All Mankind” program (2019-present), but it’s one of the better sci-fi series I’ve seen in a while, with an impressively dark political message. (Some light spoilers below.) For the uninitiated, “For All Mankind” presented a slightly tweaked history of the U.S. space program in which it was the USSR that landed on the Moon first in 1969, and shortly thereafter put a woman cosmonaut on the lunar surface. This sparks an ongoing space race that, in the original series, yields a lot of benefits for humanity. President Nixon’s insistence on a female astronaut corps to compete with the Soviets boosts the feminist movement of the 1970s and the ERA passes. New fuels generated for the space program create clean and cheap energy around Earth. There are also some darker changes — the USSR is thriving well into the 2000s, there are terrorist counter-technology movements around the globe, laborers on Mars work in nightmarish conditions and organize strikes and riots, etc. the @smotus report is a reader-supported publication. To support this work, please become a paid subscriber. Subscribe That show offers glimpses into the subtle ways this Earth is different. Teddy Kennedy never went to Chappaquidick because he was racing back to Washington to deal with the space program crisis; he gets elected President in 1972. John Lennon survives his early 1980s shooting but Pope John Paul II does not. The Apple Newton succeeded. Pretty much the whole of season 4 is a setup for an Al Gore joke. Again, mostly, the vision that “For All Mankind” presents is a positive one, with technology advancing many human interests. “Star City” goes in a very different direction. This spin-off show is about the same set of events but from the Soviet perspective. As we meet them, the team of scientists and cosmonauts responsible for the lunar landing are still basking in their hero status, but their program is embedded deep in the Soviet security state of the late 1960s. Everyone’s apartment is bugged. Whole teams of clerical staff spend their days transcribing recordings of people’s lives. People in the program, including respected cosmonauts, are regularly arrested. An incredibly menacing Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin) forces confessions and tortures and kills, expressing little more than annoyance in the process. Meanwhile, the space program’s highly respected Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) has a vision for the program that he knows the government will not approve. He insists that they need to think past the Moon to focus on colonizing the solar system, starting with Venus. (This is a rough parallel to the Americans’ pivot to Mars in the original show.) He essentially builds a secret space program within the space program, calculating that the government will embrace the mission after it has succeeded. (As an aside, I’m not sure why the Venus obsession, as a successful mission can’t produce the biggest public relations payoff: a cosmonaut standing on the surface holding the Soviet flag. Anyone standing on Venus would be immediately crushed by the 92-bar atmosphere and then cremated in the 900°F temperatures. But in a country with no free press perhaps the visual payoff was less valued.) But the overall vision is that the technological advances have only amplified the most fearsome aspects of the Soviet system. The state is paranoid (but not incorrect) about American spies and does monstrous things to protect its secrets. People are terrified to trust each other. Classic banality-of-evil figures order people to harm those they care about; those people comply rather than get shot. Others are forced into criminal behavior to protect loved ones. We’re reminded all the time these days of what happens when a government despises science. It manifests in the defunding of schools, the elevation of fossil fuels as the rest of the world pivots to solar, outbreaks of measles and diarrhea, etc. But “Star City” offers a vision of a bad government that likes science. It’s not encouraging. It’s not yet clear if there will be a season two of this show. But I strongly recommend season one. It’s both thoughtful and gripping. Share

Jul 20 • 8:04 AM EDT • Science • smotus.substack.com

The Rebbe Rejected Word-for-Word Translation

Rabbi Tuvia Bloi recalls the Rebbe’s striking instruction that translating his teachings meant far more than replacing one word with another: the message had to come alive naturally in the language of its readers.

Jul 19 • 6:23 PM EDT • Technology • anash.org

Made in Tarrant: The Velvet Box owner starts a personal coaching business for women

The Conversation Architect is intended to help women in unhappy relationships or contemplating a new one.

Jul 18 • 3:22 PM EDT • Business • fortworthreport.org

Trump's 60-day Iran deal reaches halfway mark as ceasefire collapses into escalating war

Halfway through the 60-day negotiating window, the U.S. has struck over 300 Iranian targets while Tehran attacks commercial vessels in the strait.

Jul 17 • 1:11 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Trump regulator orders Kalshi to defy Michigan court – escalating battle over prediction markets

The Trump administration took an extraordinary step this week to escalate its nationwide efforts to prevent states from regulating prediction markets, where users can trade on real-world events like sports, politics and pop culture.

Jul 17 • 11:52 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

US manufacturing output unchanged in June, but accelerates in second quarter

U.S. factory production was unchanged in June, but grew at a robust pace in the second quarter, driven by an artificial intelligence build-up and businesses ​accumulating inventory in anticipation of shortages and higher prices due to the war ‌in the Middle East.

Jul 17 • 10:16 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

When Did Sports Get So Loud?

Athletes have become influencers. In-game production has become “storytelling.” And everything has gotten very, very stimulating.

Jul 17 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • theatlantic.com

Daily Dawg Chow: Speculating on possible trade values

The latest Cleveland Browns news and notes from around the NFL in the July 17 edition of the Daily Dawg Chow.

Jul 17 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Cornelius fountain company says water restrictions are bad for business

Due to mandatory water restrictions, Charlotte Water says “the operation of decorative fountains, including recirculating fountains, is prohibited.

Jul 16 • 10:40 PM EDT • Business • wbtv.com

New SF Port program offers lease incentives

The Blue Economy Initiative is part of a multi-year effort aimed at stimulating economic growth.

Jul 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • sfexaminer.com

Billy Joel credits this music legend, who turns 80 today, for his hit song ‘Just the Way You Are’

Billy Joel says a multi-platinum music legend is responsible for making his megahit song ‘Just the Way You Are’ a hit: ‘She talked me into it’

Jul 15 • 7:50 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

CrashStealer Malware Impersonates Apple Tool to Steal Mac Passwords and Crypto

Mac users should watch out for macOS malware called CrashStealer, according to Jamf Threat Labs. The malware impersonates Apple's crash reporting framework, and it's meant to steal all kinds of sensitive information. CrashStealer collects browser data, password manager data, cryptocurrency wallet extensions, and keychain data, and Jamf first noticed it circulating in a fake Apple-notarized app called Werkbit.

Jul 15 • 7:14 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Why are right-wing parties gaining ground in Latin America?

Jul 15 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • aljazeera.com

Shared values, democracy and politics in a fragmenting world

Analysis L21 | As polarization deepens, Latin America and Europe face growing challenges to democracy, trust and collective leadership.

Jul 15 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • latinoamerica21.com

FTO designation exposes compliance gaps in Brazil’s entertainment sector

Following a domestic money-laundering probe that linked funk artists to Brazilian criminal groups and the subsequent US designation of two cartels as terrorist organisations, Brazilian legal practitioners tell Latin Lawyer they are updating sanctions-screening systems for entertainment-industry clients, reassessing their own onboarding processes for artists and producers and reaching out to Mexican peers for guidance on managing the fallout.

Jul 14 • 8:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • latinlawyer.com

Gold ‘Iran war participation trophy’ appears in DC for Trump

A protest group called The Secret Handshake placed a 10-foot-tall gold trophy on the National Mall for President Trump. In a press release, the group said the trophy is intended for de-escalating the ongoing conflict through “positive reinforcement.”

Jul 14 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Iron Maiden Sells Catalog, Name, Likeness Stake to Pophouse

With a stake in the rights relating to Maiden's longtime mascot Eddie, Pophouse says it will "turbo-charge" the rockers' cinematic projects.

Jul 14 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • billboard.com

Introducing the 2026 Field Fellowship Cohort

This summer leadership program offers students from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs the opportunity to gain hands-on public policy experience through placements at government offices and…

Jul 13 • 2:43 PM EDT • Politics • latino.ucla.edu

The Latest: Trump demands 20% toll for passage through strait

President Donald Trump said Iranian ships will no longer be able to travel through the Strait of Hormuz and America would charge a 20% toll on other countries’ eligible cargo, escalating tensions after weekend of attacks by both nations to assert control of the critical waterway

Jul 13 • 8:51 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

When regulation is good for business

By now, I think I have established both my view that I am a fan of ESG investing and the benefits of regulating what is and isn’t a sustainable investment, and my view that in Europe, ESG regulation has gone too far and become too costly. It almost feels like the old Aristotelian maxim of doing things in moderation that leads to the best outcomes is valid in regulatory efforts as well. To give you an example, let’s look at a study by the National Bank of Belgium on the impact of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) on fund flows of conventional and ESG funds. The SFDR was announced on 27 November 2019 and came into effect on 10 March 2021. It was implemented in several stages and split funds marketed in the EU into three broad categories: (i) Art. 6 funds that are basically conventional funds without any specific ESG integration, (ii) Art. 8 funds that ‘promote environmental or social characteristics’, which must provide additional reporting how they do that, and (iii) Art. 9 funds that are impact funds. The gaps between the announcement and the phased implementation give us an idea of how fund flows were affected by the regulation. It is clearly visible in the figure below that once the new regulation was announced and when it was initially implemented, fund flows in Art. 8 and Art. 9 funds increased significantly. Conventional Art. 6 funds also saw more inflows, but the increase was not statistically significant. I should add that the data below is pure fund flow, cleaned of performance effects and of any reclassified funds that moved from one classification to another. Note also that once the initial rush in ESG funds was over, additional, stricter regulatory requirements didn’t create that many new flows. This implies that with additional regulation, the funds incurred higher costs to comply but didn’t benefit in terms of new inflows and higher assets under management. Fund flows as the SFDR regulation was implemented in the EU Source: Emiris et al. (2026) When examining the drivers of these flows, the authors of the study found that institutional investors were more likely to switch to ESG funds and particularly so in countries where concerns about sustainability are culturally more accepted. In a society where buy-in into environmental and social risks is higher, private investors were shifting more of their assets into ESG funds as the regulation made it clear which funds are really green and which ones are not. And institutional investors in these countries did so as well, given the societal pressures and reputational risks of sticking with conventional funds. Meanwhile, fund managers reacted to the changing regulatory environment as well. Many funds that were mildly green before the regulation was announced became greener and more sustainable as the regulation was introduced to attract new assets and new investors. Cleverly, and unsurprisingly, these ESG funds also charge on average higher fees, which means that not only did fund managers gather fresh assets, but their profitability increased as well.

Jul 13 • 2:00 AM EDT • Business • klementoninvesting.substack.com

Azerbaijan health officials deny mumps epidemic in Baku

The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Azerbaijan reports posts have been circulating on social networks about the widespread spread of epidemic mumps in Baku do not reflect the current epidemiological situation. Health officials say the epidemiological situation of mumps in the country is stable. The registered cases of infection consist of individual sporadic cases, no epidemics or mass spread have been recorded. The current situation is constantly under epidemiological surveillance by relevant medical institutions, and the necessary preventive and counter-epidemic measures are consistently implemented. Epidemic mumps is observed more often among unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated individuals. The disease is transmitted mainly by airborne droplets - during coughing, sneezing and close contact. The incubation period usually lasts 11–23 days. The main symptoms of the disease are fever, swelling and pain in the parotid salivary glands, discomfort when chewing and swallowing, general weakness, headache and loss of appetite. In most cases, mumps is mild and results in complete recovery. However, in rare cases, certain complications may develop in unvaccinated adolescents and adults. Therefore, timely vaccination is of particular importance in preventing the disease. Subscribe to Outbreak News TV on YouTube In accordance with the National Vaccination Schedule in Azerbaijan, the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is administered to children at 12 months of age, with a booster dose at 6 years of age. The MMR vaccine is the most reliable and effective means of protection against mumps. The Ministry of Health recommends that parents check their children’s vaccination status. If for any reason the vaccination has been delayed or missed, it is recommended to contact the medical facility in your area of ​​residence and consult a doctor. To protect yourself from the disease, it is recommended to follow preventive measures such as avoiding close contact with sick people, following personal hygiene rules, washing hands regularly, and frequently ventilating closed spaces. If you experience symptoms of the disease, avoid self-medication, seek medical attention, and do not return to work until you are fully recovered. Citizens are asked to refer only to official sources and not to believe or share unverified information circulating on social networks. Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jul 11 • 10:12 PM EDT • Health • outbreaknewstoday.substack.com

Columbia scientists discover surprising link between serotonin and heart valve disease

Scientists have uncovered evidence that serotonin, the chemical best known for regulating mood, may also speed the progression of a common heart valve disease in some people. The research suggests that patients with degenerative mitral regurgitation who take SSRI antidepressants and carry a specific genetic variant may develop severe valve damage sooner, potentially requiring surgery at a younger age.

Jul 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Arts Fest 2026 Saturday event, entertainment lineup

With dozens of performances ranging from young violin and cello students to a Latin music sextet, there’s something for everyone at day four of the 60th annual Central Pennsylvania Festival

Jul 11 • 3:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • psucollegian.com

Trump’s escalating attacks on Iran pose risks at home

In today’s issue: ▪ Platner drops Senate candidacy ▪ Trump’s promises at NATO summit ▪ Kentucky governor requests McConnell update ▪ ObamaCare hikes give fuel to Democrats The latest rounds o…

Jul 9 • 7:11 AM EDT • Politics • thehill.com

ConVal’s middle schools shine with banner year in sports

ConVal's middle schools had a successful year in athletics, with championship seasons in multiple sports, and the SMS band also achieved a Platinum rating at the Great East Music Festival.

Jul 8 • 2:02 PM EDT • Sports • ledgertranscript.com

Mitch McConnell and the complications of speculating about someone's health

It's natural to wonder about a public figure's health – especially a politician who influences Americans' lives – but speculation can be harmful, too.

Jul 7 • 10:34 AM EDT • Health • usatoday.com

Clinical care, community service shape health science major’s goals

Inspired by his parents, Platinum Liang ultimately plans to pursue medical school.

Jul 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • showme.missouri.edu

Clinical care, community service shape health science major’s goals

Inspired by his parents, Platinum Liang ultimately plans to pursue medical school.

Jul 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • showme.missouri.edu

The wildest World Cup game so far, plus more on Balogun’s return

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Park the bus today. Inside: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England’s unthinkable win 🫪 Balogun returns 🎾 Osaka shocker Any weekend with World Cup knockout games ensures a compelling experience. But even outside of those — which were scintillating, to be clear — yesterday was a banner day for winners across the sports spectrum. Let’s simply rank them: 1. England, sheesh This was slotted at No. 2 until the match unfolded.

Jul 6 • 6:11 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com

Meet Leeann Curry: Teacher, business strategist and barista

She doesn’t use textbooks and barely gives tests. Instead, her students participate in real-world activities, such as simulating a coffee shop and creating a resort for a target market.

Jul 5 • 7:00 PM EDT • Business • idahoednews.org

Opinion: Legislating fisheries management from DC is fishy politics

Sen. Dan Sullivan’s bill risks turning a science-based system into election-year politics, with coastal communities left to pay the price.

Jul 5 • 7:00 PM EDT • Politics • adn.com

America’s entrepreneurial boom begins long before venture capital

Latino-owned businesses added 180,000 net new firms between 2017 and 2023 while white-owned firms declined — and the talent pipeline behind that growth runs through Minority-Serving Institutions now facing funding uncertainty.

Jul 5 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • fortune.com

Ecuador Robot Climbs Chimborazo as Science Gets Altitude and Attitude

A humanoid robot named Pemba Jose has climbed above 6,000 meters on Ecuador’s Chimborazo, turning a surreal mountain test into a serious question about conservation, climate science, national pride, and how Latin America monitors its hardest-to-reach frontiers today under pressure.

Jul 4 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • latinamericanpost.com

Strengthen Your Business With Lifetime Cybersecurity Training for $53

Get self-paced courses on CISSP, ethical hacking, and GRC through one lifetime membership.

Jul 3 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • entrepreneur.com

VivoPower Reinforces Focus on AI Data Center Business and Provides Update on Non-Core Businesses

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, July 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VivoPower PLC (NASDAQ: VIVO) (“VivoPower” or the “Company”), a B Corp-certified global developer and owner of powered land and data center infrastructure for AI compute applications, today provides the following update in respect of its strategic direction and the previously announced separation initiatives relating to its subsidiaries Tembo e-LV B.V. (“Tembo”) and Caret Digital (“Caret Digital”). Following a strategic review, the Board o

Jul 2 • 5:25 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Chris Paul fuels return speculation with Jayson Tatum workout video

Chris Paul announced his NBA retirement on Feb. 13. However, fans are speculating that he could play for the Boston Celtics next season. It came after a video of him putting up shots at the Elite Camp on Wednesday with…

Jul 1 • 10:48 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Marion County warns Oregon behavioral health rules put staff, residents at greater risk

KATU ABC 2 offers coverage of news, weather, sports and community events for Portland, Oregon and surrounding towns, including Beaverton, Lake Oswego, Milwaukie, Happy Valley, Gresham, Vancouver, Hillsboro, Oregon City, Tualatin, West Linn, Woodburn, Tigard, Tualatin and Garden Home.

Jul 1 • 4:18 PM EDT • Health • katu.com

Protecting Science. Advancing HIV Prevention. Preparing for What's Next

Global health is being reshaped by rapid geopolitical shifts, scientific breakthroughs and the growing role of artificial intelligence — creating both new opportunities and new challenges. Translating scientific breakthroughs into impact requires protecting research, advancing equitable access and ensuring communities are at the center. Explore AVAC’s latest resources to help navigate and shape what comes […]

Jul 1 • 10:30 AM EDT • Science • avac.org

US cooking oil market shrinking due to Ice pressures on Latino households, Mazola owner says

Economic squeeze and anti-immigration raids have hit Hispanic communities, prompting people to shop online and reuse oil

Jul 1 • 8:52 AM EDT • Business • theguardian.com

Sony will cease production of discs for new PlayStation games in 2028

New games sold for PlayStation consoles will only be available digitally and won’t be sold on discs effective January 2028, Sony has announced. The move applies to all PlayStation games released from that point on, including those made by Sony and those released by third parties. The PlayStation group calls the change “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” according to a PlayStation blog post reviewed by Game File in advance of its publication. As movies, TV and music have shifted from physical media to an age of downloads and streaming, Sony’s move could speed the demise of physical media in a gaming. The industry has offered consumers games via cartridges, cassettes, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays across a 50-year stretch. Sony has been reporting to investors in recent years that PlayStation games have been increasingly purchased as downloads, not as discs. The most recent figures show nearly four in five purchases of full games for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 were purchased digitally in the past year. Stats like that may cause today’s news to carry an air of the inevitable. But Sony’s declaration for 2028 is still likely to produce a shock, as the biggest gaming platform on the planet that uses game discs leaves them behind. Discs going away, but the fate of game boxes is unknown Sony is committing to still selling games in physical retailers even after they drop discs in 2028. Just how those games will be sold—in boxes with codes inside, as cards marked with digital redemption codes—is unclear. Digital games will also continue to be sold in the online PlayStation Store. New games released for PlayStation consoles prior to January 2028 will be unaffected by the policy change, Sony says. That means the PS5 games of 2027, be they a new Madden, a new God of War, a new Call of Duty, a new Sly Cooper (one can dream?), would still potentially be offered on disc. PlayStation 6 implications Sony’s timeline for a transition to a no-disc era will also spin up more speculation about the timing and configuration of Sony’s next-generation console, the probable PlayStation 6. “This pretty much guarantees that PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest,” Piers Harding-Rolls, senior games research analyst at Ampere Analysis tells Game File. Harding-Rolls also concludes from today’s news that “the base version of a PS6 will not include a physical media drive,” as Sony looks to keep costs down on the device. Sony itself is saying nothing about the PS6 today: not its timing, nor how it might or might not support internal or external disc drives in order to run disc-based PS4 and PS5 games, should the console be backwards compatible. The many signs this was coming Industry support for games being released on physical media has been waning. As has consumer interest in them. PC games effectively went all-digital years ago, thanks to the popularity of playing games through Steam and other digital storefronts. The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that kept much of the global population home helped shift shopping patterns toward downloads. Sony’s own data shows PlayStation game downloads being an uncommon consumer choice a decade ago and now becoming the norm. On consoles, physical media has been in such decline that Sony and Microsoft both launched their current gen Xbox Series and PS5 consoles in 2020 with cheaper versions that lacked disc drives. In early 2024, Phil Spencer, then head of Xbox, told me that ““[w]e ship games physically and digitally, and we’re really just following what the customers are doing.” He added that the game industry had become an outlier in still supporting disc-based entertainment, even as movies and TV have bailed on discs in favor of downloads and steaming: “Gaming consoles themselves have kind of become the last consumer electronic device that has a drive. And this is a real issue, just in terms of the number of manufacturers that are actually building drives and the cost associated with those. And when you think about cogs that we’re going to go put in a console—and as you have fewer suppliers and fewer buyers—the cost of the drive does have an impact.” Last year, the Nintendo’s Switch 2, which uses cartridges rather than discs, introduced the concept of game-key cards, which are physical media that contain no game, just a prompt for a download. Even disc-based games aren’t what they once were, now frequently containing just stubs of games rather than the whole thing. The website Does It Play has tested over 3000 games and found that, for example, that the disc version of this year’s hit 007: First Light, only contained the game’s first mission, with the rest needing to be downloaded. Beyond all that, last week brought the news that Grand Theft Auto VI, likely the biggest game launch this decade, will debut for PS5 and Xbox Series without a disc-based version. Today’s big news comes to you for free. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and ensure more of my work is possible, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Discs helped define PlayStation However the trends in entertainment may be going, it is still remarkable to see PlayStation ditch discs given their importance in PlayStation history: In the late 1990s, the first PlayStation’s support for games on relatively cheap CD-ROMs instead of traditional game cartridges allowed the upstart console to outmaneuver cartridge-based systems from Nintendo and Sega, as it drove down game prices down in the process. (The cheaper disc format even prompted Final Fantasy VII maker Square to taunt Nintendo in a magazine ad, saying that if the game was “available on cartridge, it’d retail for around $1200.”) PlayStation devices often doubled as machines for watching movies and TV on the latest disc-based formats. In the late 2000s, for example, Sony’s pricy PS3 gained traction as a go-to device for playing then-novel Blu-Ray discs. In 2013, Sony effectively roasted the digital game-sharing restrictions proposed by rival Microsoft for its upcoming Xbox One console by showing how games could be shared for the then-upcoming PS4. In a 21-second clip that has over 20 million views on YouTube, one PlayStation executive simply handed a game box—presumably with disc inside—to another, who said “thanks.” Sony’s possible motivations The PlayStation announcement today cites “consumer preferences” and a shift away from discs among “the broader entertainment industry,” but does not delve into the decision-making process that brought Sony to this point. Sony is not discussing the economics of this move (I asked!), but there are a number of potential factors: Abandoning discs will spare Sony the cost of manufacturing and shipping them, which analysts and industry veterans I spoke to said could account for $1 or so of a game’s retail price. For first-party games, that’s direct savings for Sony, though the amount is limited by the winnowing percentage of people who were even buying the disc-based versions. For third-party games, Sony could pass the savings on to partners or just retain the better profit margin for themselves. As the 2024 comments from Phil Spencer alluded to, leaving discs behind could mean leaving disc-drives behind, allowing Sony to produce consoles more cheaply. Switching to digital-only for games could diminish the risks of copies of new games leaking. It would also seemingly make second-hand sales of used games impossible, pushing more people to buy their own copies of games. These economic benefits for Sony could be boons for the games industry overall, Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls tells Game File. Among other things, it could free publishers and retailers from having to worry about securing an inventory of game discs when trying to sell games, he noted. “If there is a way to streamline the business of games retail, I generally think it’s a good thing for the industry as it removes unnecessary costs,” Harding-Rolls said. “This will help offset pressure on margins from other directions – development and staffing costs for example.” Should the industry shift from game boxes that contain discs to smaller, cheaper game cards, Harding-Rolls said, that reduces pressure on publishers and retailers. “The advantage of everything going digital for the industry is that sales can be tracked much more easily and there is less commercial risk for publishers wanting to continue selling via retail,” he said. The shift to no discs will also likely impact game development timelines, as developers will no longer face the same urgency to have a build ready to submit to PlayStation for the production of a disc, as industry experts noted around GTA VI’s no-disc news last week. Instead, projects may gain weeks of development time, in the event delivery deadlines for platform approval move closer to release date. Preservationists’ likely worries While millions of gamers have shifted to digital, there are still people who associate game discs—and only game discs—with actual ownership of PlayStation games. That portion of the gaming community spoke up last week about wanting to buy a version of GTA VI that they could hold in their hands, could lend to a friend and could potentially pop into a well-preserved PS5 console three decades from now and still see it run. Such gamers didn’t want to worry that they’d merely purchased a digital copy that could lose access to the game if, say, the company behind the game someday turns of the servers that transmit downloadable copies. Digital copies of games are inherently less long-lasting, because consumers aren’t actually buying a game (on a disc), just buying access to the game. The fine print in online gaming shops notes this, as does a recent law that went on the books in California in 2025. That lasw requires game publishers doing business in the state to refrain from words like “sell” when offering digital copies of games, unless they explicitly tell consumers that what’s being sold isn’t the game itself but a potentially revocable license to access it. A Sony spokesperson noted to Game File that “[w]ith all digital content, including games, movies, and music, players are purchasing a personal license for non-commercial use.” Regarding the fears of PlayStation games being lost to time in an all-digital era, the rep also noted that Sony remains “committed to delivering experiences from past generations to the new platforms our players are using.” They noted that PlayStation has used emulation and remasters to keep offering its classic games to modern gamers. It’s true that many consumers have become accustomed to not having physical copies of new music albums or movies, but the relative precariousness of digital copies of games is in fact being highlighted today by…. Sony’s other big announcement: the upcoming closure of the PS3 and PS Vita online stores Sony said today that it will be closing the online marketplaces for its PlayStation 3 console and PS Vita handheld in most countries in July 2027 (sooner elsewhere: August 2026 for the PS3 store Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua; late 2026 for PS3 in other Latin American countries and the Middle East). “We know this news may be disappointing to PS3 and PS Vita players who hold a special place in their hearts for this generation of gaming,” Sony said in its announcement, saying the move “was not an easy decision for us to make.” Sony said that PS3 and Vita marketplaces “are no longer able” to support modern commerce systems, prompting a “need” to close the shops and focus on more modern PlayStation platform stores. The news may spark some deja vu. Sony announced back in March 2021 that it planned to take the PS3, Vita and PlayStation Portable marketplaces offline that summer. The move would have caused some 2,000 digital-only games to become unavailable for new purchasers, according to a VGC analysis at the time. Fans complained loudly. By April 2021, Sony walked back the PS3 and Vita shop closures, with then PlayStation boss Jim Ryan saying “it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.” This time around, Sony is giving a longer notice period in most regions. The closure of those stores is still likely to cut off access to new purchases of digital-only PS3 and Vita games. The current PlayStation 5 marketplace sells PS5 and PS4 games, as well as a selection of PS1 and PS2 games. It does not sell PS3 games, because games for that platform can’t run on the system (some are offered via a PlayStation Plus streaming option). Vita games also aren’t sold via PS5. Sony says digitally purchased PS3 and Vita games will be downloadable after the stores’ shutdowns “for the foreseeable future.” Sony’s move contrasts with Microsoft’s Xbox platform, which continues to sell and support games from all four Xbox console generations. But it puts it in line with Nintendo, which disabled purchases in the marketplace for its Wii console (a contemporary of the PS3) in 2019. Nintendo discontinued purchases in the online shop for its 3DS portable (a contemporary of the Vita) in 2023. The big questions about Sony’s 2028 post-disc era Will Microsoft follow suit, ending support for new disc-based games on Xbox platforms and therefore all game consoles, too? Whether Microsoft does or not, will third-parties that can no longer release games on discs for PlayStation, simply ditch the disc options across the board? Given the GTA VI no-disc experiment launching this November, will more game publishers decide to forgo disc-based offerings even in 2027? How will no-disc PS5/6 games be packaged and sold in brick-and-mortar retail stores? What becomes of game sharing in an all-digital era? Will Sony modify its current set-up, which currently allows some sharing of digital games across a pair of consoles, to allow more casual lending? (See for example, Nintendo’s year-old system of letting players lend a digital game to another player in a “family group” for up to 14 days.) Will there be a version of a PS6 with a disc drive? Or will a drive be offered as an add-on? And how will gamers who want to retain access to PS4/PS5 disc-based games react to whichever configurations Sony chooses to offer? What will the final disc-based PlayStation game be?

Jul 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news

Palace Theater and Downtown Gallatin offer July entertainment

Historic Downtown Gallatin, Inc. and the Palace Theater continue to offer plenty of entertainment and shopping choices to Gallatin citizens, both inside the air-conditioned theater and outside in the July heat. The Kids Summer Movie Series continues all month on Fridays from 10 a.m. until noon. July 3 will feature 2025’s “How to Train Your

Jun 30 • 2:52 PM EDT • Entertainment • mainstreetmediatn.com

GTA VI May Be Limited to 30 FPS on Current-Gen Consoles

With the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI rapidly approaching, rumors surrounding the game's launch have been circulating, with some of those predicting that the game's launch will result in a console hardware shortage, more recently, however, Digital Foundry predicted that the new GTA game may not be ...

Jun 30 • 12:56 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com

More than 100 Tennessee workers laid off amid closure of Gallatin business

More than 100 people will lose their jobs amid the closure of Stanley Black and Decker in Gallatin.

Jun 29 • 4:04 PM EDT • Business • wsmv.com

This Gainesville restaurant failed its health inspection with a 68. Here’s why

A Gainesville nuevo latino restaurant received a failing grade on its health inspection.

Jun 29 • 4:02 PM EDT • Health • gainesvilletimes.com

Passback finds new life for old sports equipment, equipping youth to take the field

Magdalen Sparrow grew up on St. Louis’ soccer fields chasing after stray balls and picking up lost water bottles to put in overflowing lost and found bins. Then known by her maiden name, Magdalen Pike, she went on to play D1 soccer at Southeast Missouri State University, accumulating a closet full of sports gear in […]

Jun 29 • 6:50 AM EDT • Sports • stlmag.com

CD Projekt is rebranding as CD Projekt Red, but confusingly, CD Projekt Red is still CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt has rebranded itself as CD Projekt Red – or CD Projekt Red Spółka Akcyjna, to be precise.

Jun 28 • 3:55 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

Efzimfotase alfa demonstrated improvements in bone health in treatment-naïve pediatric patients with hypophosphatasia achieving median difference of 1.67 vs placebo in RGI-C Score at week 25 in MULBERRY Phase III trial

Positive results from the MULBERRY Phase III trial showed that efzimfotase alfa (ALXN1850), an investigational enzyme replacement therapy, demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in bone health in children (2 to

Jun 28 • 3:45 PM EDT • Health • astrazeneca-us.com

Factory Entertainment Announces Three More STAR TREK Collectibles, Including Gold-Pressed Latinum Bars

Factory Entertainment today unveiled three more STAR TREK replicas, including bars of gold-pressed latinum and Eline’s necklace from “The Inner Light”

Jun 26 • 2:04 PM EDT • Entertainment • blog.trekcore.com

Sheriff’s office releases body-cam video after viral arrest at Augusta business

The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office has issued a statement after a video has been circulating social media of a woman’s arrest.

Jun 26 • 11:41 AM EDT • Business • wrdw.com

Earthquakes Have Often Shaken Latin American Politics

How governments respond to natural disasters can shape their political trajectories, an expert writes.

Jun 25 • 4:19 PM EDT • Politics • americasquarterly.org

Democratic socialists cemented power in New York. Next, the rest of the country?

The wins would not have been possible without significant support from Black and Latino voters who favored them over establishment candidates.

Jun 25 • 11:37 AM EDT • Politics • detroitnews.com

Another look at carrots and eyesight; how to get more fiber; why mosquitoes bite some people and not others; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources

AARP reporter Stacey Colino interviewed Milam Brantley, MD, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, in 2020 for a story about whether eating carrots can improve vision. Sacramento Bee reporter Samantha Agate has now used Brantley’s comments in an AI-curated story created by content specialists on the same topic that has been picked up by MSN and others. Prevention magazine interviewed Heidi Silver, RD, PhD, Founding Director of the Vanderbilt Diet, Body Composition, and Human Metabolism Core, for a story about the importance of fiber and how people can get more of it in their diet. William Schaffner, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine, was quoted by several news outlets about public health issues, including: Women’s Health (tick bites and alpha-gal syndrome); The Washington Post (tetanus); and Healthline (why mosquitoes prefer to bite some people and leave others alone). A visit to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt by some Banana Ball baseball players was covered by The Tennessean and WZTV Fox 17 News, and The Tennessean’s story was also picked up by Yahoo! Sports. Clarksville Now published a story written by the Montgomery County Economic Development Team, whointerviewed Bradley Stancombe, MD, professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Vanderbilt Neonatology, about the new energy of Vanderbilt Clarksville Hospital and how the facility is recruiting physicians. Healio Allergy/Asthma group editorial director Richard Gawel interviewed Mark Rolfsen, MD, Clinical Fellow in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, for a story about his presentation at the American Thoracic Society meeting on metal health outcomes following ICU discharge. Nashville Scene reporter Hannah Herner interviewed James Crowe, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, for a story about his efforts to prepare for the next pandemic by isolating antibodies that can neutralize dangerous viruses. Medscape reporter Kathleen Doheny interviewed Neesha Choma, Associate Chief of Staff of Vanderbilt University Hospital, for a story about how hospitals can reduce readmissions.

Jun 25 • 10:56 AM EDT • Health • news.vumc.org

Keith Flaherty: Translating Science into Medicine

Keith Flaherty: Translating Science into Medicine / American Association for Cancer Research, cancer, Keith Flaherty, Massachusetts General Hospital,

Jun 25 • 8:47 AM EDT • Science • oncodaily.com

Moody Center announces exhibition exploring math, science and tech rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems

Through a framing of North, Central and South America as interconnected regions, “Radiant Geometries: Vectors of Knowledge from the Indigenous Americas” brings together contemporary Indigenous and Latin American artists whose practices illuminate knowledge as a living technology, through which the mathematical, metaphysical and artistic realms converge.

Jun 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.rice.edu

Revisiting the Politics of Indigeneity in Latin America

CDDRL Research-in-Brief [4-minute read]

Jun 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu

Folarin Balogun and USMNT Transfer Updates

Hosts Tamerra Griffin and James McNicholas break down a massive six-match World Cup slate as group stages reach their climax. Soccer insider David Ornstein joins the show to discuss the escalating transfer market buzz surrounding USMNT star Folarin Balogun and Tottenham’s Lucas Bergvall. Plus, the team highlights The Athletic’s interactive World Cup Tracker with Jay Harris to map out the complicated qualification pathways for Group A, B, and C. Can the USMNT line up a favorable Round of 32 matchup? Senior Editor Hannah Vanbiber also dives into the debate surrounding Jeremy Doku’s...

Jun 25 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com

Cincinnati Latin-Asian restaurant announces closure after 10 years in business

A restaurant that fused Latin and Asian cultures together in Cincinnati is preparing to close its doors at the end of the month.

Jun 24 • 5:46 PM EDT • Business • wlwt.com

Country powerhouse Sara Evans dives into Tulsa Sept. 25

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa will welcome multiplatinum country music powerhouse Sara Evans at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25, at Hard Rock Live inside the casino.

Jun 24 • 4:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • cherokeephoenix.org

Colombia's vote may reshape the Amazon's future as political winds shift across Latin America

Abelardo de la Espriella, set to be Colombia’s president, has intensified debate over the future of the Amazon

Jun 24 • 2:15 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Colombia's vote may reshape the Amazon's future as political winds shift across Latin America

Abelardo de la Espriella, set to be Colombia's president, has intensified debate over the future of the Amazon.

Jun 24 • 2:11 PM EDT • Politics • newsday.com

Reproductive Health and Constitutionalism in Latin America: A Research Agenda

--Verónica Undurraga, Professor at the Faculty of Law, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez [Editor’s Note: This is one of our ICONnect columns. For more inf

Jun 24 • 2:00 AM EDT • Health • iconnectblog.com

Fire damages Rockford plating business

Fire damages Rockford plating business

Jun 23 • 8:13 PM EDT • Business • wifr.com

Vistra Expands Latin American Business Reach

The launch follows the group's acquisition of a Latam business late in 2025.

Jun 23 • 8:00 PM EDT • Business • familywealthreport.com

Circulating metabolites at the crossroads of lifestyle and brain health

Nature Aging - Circulating metabolites might provide early insights into brain aging before clinical symptoms appear. Ahmad and colleagues show that specific blood metabolites in midlife are...

Jun 23 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • nature.com

Act Fast: Get an Oura Ring for $44 With the Amex Platinum Card

We haven't seen a deal this good for the Oura Ring since Black Friday. Act quickly to snag yours for just $44 with the Amex Platinum card.

Jun 23 • 12:43 PM EDT • Technology • upgradedpoints.com

Letter to the Editor: Let’s support local businesses — and leave politics out of it

I was disappointed to learn that a list has been circulating in Chico identifying certain local businesses based on the political views of their owners and encouraging residents to boycott them. Regardless of where one falls on the…

Jun 23 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • chicoer.com

Fire damages Rockford plating business

A fire caused significant damage to a Rockford business late Monday night.

Jun 23 • 4:47 AM EDT • Business • wifr.com

Listening for quantum oscillations in the Kondo insulator YbB12

Magnetic quantum oscillations have been unexpectedly observed in insulators, where freely moving charge carriers are not expected to exist. A joint study by researchers from Tokyo University of Science, The University of Tokyo, and Kobe University investigated this puzzling behavior in the Kondo insulator YbB12 using ultrasound. While no oscillations were detected in the insulating state, clear signals emerged after the material became metallic, offering new insight into unusual quantum behavior in next-generation materials.

Jun 22 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org

Putnam Science Academy closes after losing accreditation, facing financial turmoil

Putnam Science Academy, a for-profit boarding school known for its standout basketball program, has closed, according to a letter attributed to school president Tieqiang Ding that was circulating on social […]

Jun 22 • 11:42 AM EDT • Science • hartfordbusiness.com

The “Luck” of Immigrant Women in Entertainment

As an immigrant woman, my career in the entertainment industry is not built on luck. More like persistence, adaptability, and sacrifice.

Jun 22 • 10:31 AM EDT • Entertainment • latinamedia.co

“Criminal Approach to Politics”: Trump Ally Abelardo de la Espriella Wins Colombian Presidency

Right-wing Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella has clinched a narrow victory in Sunday’s runoff presidential election in Colombia, defeating leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, an ally of current President Gustavo Petro. De la Espriella ran a fearmongering, “tough-on-crime” campaign, promising to build mega-prisons inspired by El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, to bomb “narcoterrorist camps” and to abandon Petro’s peace efforts. His reported victory is also a win for U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration is waging an intensifying “war on drugs” across Latin America, targeting left-wing leaders like Petro with false allegations and threats of military intervention. “De la Espriella clearly represents a criminal approach to politics: lying, propaganda, coordination and collusion with criminal narcotrafficking, restriction of rights, and money laundering,” says longtime Colombian activist Manuel Rozental. With his victory, says Rozental, “We expect to have military operations and a U.S. intervention within the country. We expect to have human rights abuses. We expect to have militarization. And it’s all for the extraction of resources and the link of drug trafficking to the U.S. government, U.S. interests and global mafia.”

Jun 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • democracynow.org

Why the owner of bustling Prince George’s Co. restaurant is seeking clarity about its entertainment license

A local restaurateur who says she is accused of violating her lease is now facing a new challenge.

Jun 21 • 6:26 PM EDT • Entertainment • wtop.com

AI regulation is a mess, and Anthropic is caught in the crosshairs

The latest spat between Anthropic and the government raises a broad concern among AI and safety researchers: There is no consistent framework for regulating AI.

Jun 21 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • cnn.com

After Local Drag Queen and Business Owner Banned From Instagram, More Questions Than Answers

Club ERA owner Naomi Dix says that her accounts were shut down this week for purportedly violating community standards.

Jun 19 • 12:09 PM EDT • Business • indyweek.com

Zohran Mamdani: Welcome to NYC, Where Fútbol Meets Joy, Politics and Tacos

Mayor Mamdani on sports, immigration, ICE, Trump, and what makes a great taco.

Jun 19 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • latinousa.org

A brain-computer interface has, for the first time, restored fluent everyday speech to a person who had lost it — a man with ALS who had not spoken aloud in years until a small implant from the BrainGate clinical trial began translating his attempts to speak directly into computer-synthesised words, in a result researchers reported in June 2026

Casey Harrell can now talk for twelve hours at a stretch. Two years ago, he could not talk at all. The ALS he was diagnosed with several years earlier had progressively destroyed the motor neurons controlling the muscles of his face and throat, leaving him with the symptoms doctors call dysarthria and, eventually, anarthria — […]

Jun 19 • 2:45 AM EDT • Technology • spacedaily.com

Waves of lawsuits and internet tracking: CIPA in the digital age

Small businesses are getting sued at an alarming rate for violating internet privacy laws, with one law firm fielding over 500 lawsuits alone citing the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

Jun 17 • 8:00 PM EDT • Business • capradio.org

AI Health Startup Wants to Assist Half of Latin American Doctors

An Andreessen Horowitz-backed healthcare startup born in Latin America wants to put its AI assistant in the hands of half the region’s 1.9 million doctors by the end of 2027, a bet that technology can help bridge a shortage of medical professionals across strained health systems.

Jun 17 • 1:46 PM EDT • Health • bloomberg.com

Tribes and ANCs Are Not DEI: Key Takeaways from the 2026 NSBGCA Conference | Insights

The 2026 National Small Business Government Contractors Association (NSBGCA) Alaska Regional Conference reiterated that entity-owned firms can participate in federal procurement without violating DEI policies.

Jun 17 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • hklaw.com

A New Science Diplomacy in Latin America Embeds Knowledge in Public Institutions

Latin America is pioneering a conception of science diplomacy as the political craft of embedding expertise into public institutions.

Jun 17 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • issues.org

A far-right backlash is surging in Latin America as crime fears fuel Bukele-style crackdowns

At the start of this decade, Latin America leaned left as progressive politicians gained power amid public outrage over inequities worsened by the pandemic

Jun 17 • 2:15 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

AI and brain-computer interface allow speechless ALS patient to work a full-time job

The hardware isn't new, but a UC Davis research team's machine learning-powered method of translating brain activity in an ALS patient into sentences with 92% accuracy is

Jun 16 • 2:44 PM EDT • Technology • theregister.com