WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is launching a new competition for mobile satellite-control antennas, formally restarting a program it canceled after abandoning a $1.7 billion contract with AeroVironment and shifting toward a more commercial procurement strategy.

The Space Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office earlier this month issued a pre-solicitation under the Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource program, known as SCAR, seeking industry proposals for electronically steered phased-array antennas that can supplement the military’s aging Satellite Control Network.

The solicitation is the latest step in the government’s effort to reset a program originally awarded in 2022 to BlueHalo, later acquired by AeroVironment. The contract was terminated after the government decided to shift its acquisition strategy away from a single-vendor arrangement toward an open competition built around commercially developed systems rather than a customized design.

SCAR was created to address growing capacity constraints in the Satellite Control Network, a global system of military ground stations used to track, monitor and command U.S. satellites. These network terminals rely on large mechanically steered dishes that typically communicate with one spacecraft at a time, limiting throughput as the number of military satellites grows.

Under the new approach, the Space Force is seeking commercially derived phased-array systems that can be produced at scale.

The Commercial Solutions Opening, or CSO, is expected to serve as the first step toward a new procurement that officials have said will introduce additional vendors and emphasize manufacturing capacity, supply-chain resilience and fixed-price production.

New competitors

The new competition is expected to draw established defense contractors as well as newer commercial entrants. AeroVironment has said it intends to submit a version of its BADGER antenna, the system originally developed under the SCAR agreement.

The restart also opens a lane for companies such as Northwood Space, a California startup developing commercial phased-array ground systems. Northwood recently raised $100 million and has been positioning itself as a supplier of ground infrastructure for satellite command-and-control and data communications.

In January, Northwood won a $49.8 million Space Force contract through the Joint Antenna Marketplace to augment capacity for the Satellite Control Network. That separate initiative allows the Space Force to tap commercial antenna capacity rather than relying only on government-owned ground stations.

Northwood is developing two main products. Portal is a modular phased-array ground station designed to support multiple simultaneous satellite links through electronic beam steering rather than mechanically moving dishes. The company says a single Portal installation can support up to eight concurrent connections.

Its second product, Prism, is aimed at high-volume satellite communications and data delivery.

Northwood recently hired Patrick Little, a former Space Force program director who worked on the Satellite Control Network and related ground systems, as director of U.S. government growth. Little said the current acquisition environment is creating openings for nontraditional suppliers.

“I think the government’s doing a really good job” bringing in commercial competitors into programs, Little told SpaceNews. “Barriers are rapidly coming down, which is great. There’s lots of opportunity for commercial.”

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NBC unveiled its Fall 2026 premiere schedule, and if you’re a fan of scripted television, you may want to sit down before taking a look.

Actually, scratch that. You’ll have plenty of time to sit down because there won’t be much scripted programming to watch.

NBC’s lineup is packed with football, reality competitions, and unscripted fare, leaving longtime fans of the network’s dramas with a surprisingly barren fall calendar. 

While other broadcasters will likely unveil returning hits and new scripted offerings throughout September, NBC appears content to hand over much of the season to The Voice, America’s Got Talent, The Traitors: New Blood, and football.

The most glaring issue isn’t that NBC has reality programming. Every network does.

It’s that NBC barely seems interested in offering scripted alternatives.

The network’s lone new fall drama, Line of Fire, starring Peter Krause and Hope Davis, premieres September 21 after The Voice. That’s it.

One.

A single hour of new scripted drama serving as the lone representative for an entire genre on one of the country’s major broadcast networks.

Meanwhile, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D. won’t return until October 7. Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU follow on October 8.

That means NBC’s biggest drama brands will spend most of September sitting on the sidelines while viewers are encouraged to invest their time in singing competitions and reality contests.

And if you’re hoping additional scripted programming is waiting in the wings, NBC has already confirmed that The Rockford Files reboot and Sunset P.I. are being held for midseason.

In other words, the network isn’t merely delaying a few premieres. It’s delaying entire portions of its scripted slate until 2027.

The schedule becomes even more striking when viewed as a whole.

September opens with football. Then comes The Traitors: New Blood. Then multiple nights of The Voice. America’s Got Talent occupies two-hour blocks. Dateline fills Friday nights. 

Even the comedies arrive gradually, with Happy’s Place and the new series Newlyweds not premiering until late October and St. Denis Medical waiting until November.

For viewers who still tune into broadcast television primarily for scripted storytelling, the message feels impossible to ignore.

Wait. Wait until October. Wait until January. Wait until spring. Wait while reality programming gets first dibs on the schedule.

NBC executives would likely argue that these decisions are driven by ratings economics. Reality shows cost less, can air more episodes, and often deliver dependable audiences. From a business perspective, the strategy makes sense.

From a viewer perspective, it’s becoming harder to understand what NBC wants to be.

Once upon a time, fall premiere season was an event. Networks packed their schedules with ambitious dramas, new comedies, and returning favorites. There was a sense that broadcasters were competing to earn viewers’ attention.

Now NBC’s schedule feels less like a showcase and more like a placeholder.

The frustrating part is that NBC still has some of broadcast television’s strongest scripted brands. One Chicago remains a powerhouse.

Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU continue to draw loyal audiences. New dramas like Line of Fire deserve room to breathe and build momentum.

Instead, scripted television feels like an afterthought.

Perhaps Line of Fire will be a breakout hit. Maybe The Rockford Files and Sunset P.I. will make midseason worth the wait.

But looking at NBC’s fall schedule as it currently stands, it’s difficult to escape one conclusion:

If you love scripted television, NBC is asking for a remarkable amount of patience.

And after years of shrinking episode counts, delayed premieres, and increasingly crowded reality schedules, viewers may be running out of it.

NBC Fall 2026 Premiere Calendar

Thursday, September 17

• 8:00-10:00 PM – The Traitors: New Blood

Monday, September 21

• 8:00-10:00 PM – The Voice
• 10:00-11:00 PM – Line of Fire (NBC’s only new fall drama)

Tuesday, September 22

• 8:00-9:00 PM – The Voice
• 9:00-11:00 PM – America’s Got Talent

Wednesday, September 23

• 8:00-9:00 PM – The Voice
• 9:00-11:00 PM – America’s Got Talent Season Finale

Friday, September 25

• 9:00-11:00 PM – Dateline NBC

Wednesday, October 7

Thursday, October 8

• 9:00-10:00 PM – Law & Order: SVU
• 10:00-11:00 PM – Law & Order

Friday, October 23

• 8:00-8:30 PM – Happy’s Place
• 8:30-9:00 PM – Newlyweds

Monday, November 2

• 8:00-8:30 PM – St. Denis Medical
• 8:30-9:00 PM – The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins  

Coming Midseason

• The Rockford Files
• Sunset P.I.  

Well, there you have it. Mark your calendars!

Or, don’t.

I guess it depends on what shows on the NBC schedule bring light to your life. Me? I’ll be holding out hope for David Boreanaz to work wonders with Jim Rockford.

Faraday Future

Faraday Future would like you to purchase an $89,900 robot. As part of its latest revamp, the embattled electric car company is now pitching a lineup of robots, including humanoids, quadrupeds and a robotic arm. If that name doesn’t ring any bells, that could be because the company has been going through a bit of a pivot over the past year in an attempt to salvage its bottom line, if not its reputation. 

That’s become something of a theme for Faraday. The business generated a fair bit of hype years before it showed off its first production-ready electric car at CES 2017. Its leaders certainly had lofty goals. But in the almost decade since, both the business and its founder, YT Jia, experienced financial tumult. Compounded by about a dozen lawsuits, internal turmoil, layoffs and yet more confusion around money, a lot of Faraday’s plans went on hold. It showed. In January 2025, it said it had sold “15 or 16” vehicles.

However, Faraday Future returned to CES that year promising a new electric minivan and a “fresh start.” The return of founder YT Jia as sole global CEO in May of this year as part of a larger executive shakeup might mean a loose definition of “fresh.” The company is still putting work into its EV strategy, with the first pre-production model of its FX Super One MPV van completed in December. But now it seems to be taking a page from Tesla’s book and directing more energy into robotics.

This month, Faraday Future shared some new details about its robotics lineup. There’s a quadruped model called Navi that looks to be targeted toward kids for learning embodied AI. That one starts at just under $2,000, but you may have to pay extra to give it a 3D-printed canine head. The company also has a new version of its humanoid model called Futurist. The 5’8″ robot, equipped with NVIDIA Sonic’s full-body motion control system, is on sale for just shy of $90K. It’s also selling an industrial-grade robotic arm that it’s calling a “mobile manipulator product.” There’s no public pricing, which is likely code for unbelievably expensive, even for business customers.

Despite the massive price tags and a history one could most politely call spotty, the company seems to be counting on at least some sales. According to its latest press release, Faraday Future claims to expect shipments of more than 100 robotics units in June and that total shipments for the first six months on the year are “expected to surpass our original target of 220 units.” Hey, at least it’s better than 15.

Sam Smith has announced their fifth album ‘Hazel Eyes’ and shared its romantic new single ‘My Guy’ – check it out below.

The singer-songwriter will release the new record and the follow-up to 2023’s ‘Gloria’ on August 21 via Capitol Records UK. It is available to pre-order now here.

Fans have been given a taste of the record with ‘My Guy’, a warm and heartfelt track that shows off Smith’s deeply soulful vocals, over a minimal, restrained backing. “And like all good things, it caught me by surprise / You could dream he’s yours all you want, but he’s mine / He’s my guy,” Smith sings.

Check out the video for ‘My Guy’ here:

Speaking about the single, Smith has said: “This is a song that I feel I have been waiting a lifetime to write and sing. Written with beautiful friends on a summer’s day in New York, this one fell out of the sky.

“In this sometimes cold and distant world, I hope you can feel the love and the closeness of this recording. I tried to capture the glow and the warmth of love in this one, it makes me cry, maybe it will make you feel a little love too.”

‘Hazel Eyes’, which includes the 2025 single ‘To Be Free’, was created alongside Smith’s longtime collaborator and friend Simon Aldred, with much of the 12-track album taking shape in New York.

It also features contributions from Feist and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who has worked with Yoko Ono and Damien Rice, with parts of the album recorded at Electric Lady Studios.

Smith has said: “This album is an incredibly special record to me. I have been writing it for over three years with a very small group of beautiful, dear friends of mine.

“This album is very personal, and I feel I have deepened myself as an artist through the making of it, through being a producer on the record, to walking alongside this record from the start to the finish and pushing myself at every single turn. This record and this music is incredibly romantic. I’ve learned so many life lessons through making this album, and I’ve documented it all through the music.”

Sam Smith – ‘Hazel Eyes’ tracklist: 

1. Everlasting Love 
2. Hazel Eyes 
3. Moondance (feat. Feist) 
4. My Guy 
5. When He’sGone  
6. Thief 
7. Love Is AStillness  
8. Sugar Rush 
9. Oh Mother (feat. The TwoCityChorus)  
10. Constant Companion 
11. Hold On 
12. To Be Free

On Friday (June 26), Smith will mark the start of NYC Pride Weekend with an intimate performance at the Booking.com Theater at the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center.

NME gave Smith’s last album ‘Gloria’ a four-star review, writing: “Smith’s soulful voice is stunning throughout, and it’s surely a sign of confidence that several songs feature such prominent and intricate backing vocals. When you’re comfortable in yourself, you don’t always have to push to the front. Smith’s heavenly tone also helps to sell the odd bland line.”

Philadelphia psych-folk duo and frontrunners for most “un-Googleable band name” @ (pronounced like “at”) have signed to 4AD for their sophomore album. Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak will release Autosmile on October 16 via the storied British label. As a lead single, they’ve shared the LP’s title track alongside a stripped-down performance video. Watch it below.

Rose and Filipczak originally self-released their debut full-length, 2021’s Mind Palace Music. Carpark Records reissued the album in 2023 and, the following year, put out an EP by the duo, Are You There God? It’s Me, @. @ will support both YHWH Nailgun and This is Lorelei on their respective North American tours this fall, then head to Europe in November for their own run of headlining dates. Scroll down to see the full run of shows.

Revisit Nina Corcoran’s review of Are You There God? It’s Me, @.

Autosmile:
01 Bird
02 Love in the Dark
03 I Know You Are (But What Am I Thinking)
04 Earthly Love
05 Your Dog
06 Untitled
07 I’m Not in Pain
08 Punish My Mind
09 Judgement Farmer
10 Autosmile
11 Amity

@:
09-18-20 Philadelphia, PA – Making Time
10-01 Seattle, WA – Chop Suey +
10-02 Vancouver, British Columbia – The Fox Cabaret +
10-03 Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios +
10-05 Berkeley, CA – Cornerstone +
10-06 San Diego, CA – Soda Bar +
10-09 Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room +
10-27 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall =
10-28 Lakewood, OH – Mahall’s =
10-30 Toronto, Ontario – The Concert Hall =
10-31 Montreal, Quebec – Bar Le Ritz P.D.B. =
11-02 Boston, MA – Royale =
11-04 Washington, D.C. – The Atlantis =
11-05 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church =
11-06 New York, NY – Webster Hall =
11-09 Paris, France – Point FMR
11-11 Bristol, England – Exchange
11-12 Leeds, England – Lending Room
11-13 Glasgow, Scotland – 1990
11-14 Birmingham, England – Hare & Hounds
11-15 Manchester, England – Yes Pink Room
11-16 Dublin, Ireland – Workman’s Club
11-18 London, England – St Matthias Church
11-21 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Cinetol
11-22 Leeuwarden, Netherlands – Explore the North Festival
11-23 Berlin, Germany – Kantine am Berghain
11-24 Brussels, Belgium – Botanique

+ with YHWH Nailgun
= with This is Lorelei

WASHINGTON — A report by NASA’s inspector general is the latest to highlight the problems that the increasing number of launches is posing to spaceports.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General released a report June 22 on NASA launch infrastructure at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It concluded that those spaceports are not equipped to handle the growing demand for government and commercial launches.

“NASA’s launch infrastructure is dated and lacks the capacity to meet the growing demands of the agency and government and commercial partners,” it stated. “Based on current launch projections, Kennedy and Wallops are expected to operate near capacity in the 2028 to 2029 time frame.”

NASA data included in the report projected launches supported by KSC, which includes those at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, to grow from 109 in 2025 to 268 in 2030. Launches from Wallops would grow from 17 in 2025 to 44 in 2030, according to the agency.

That projected growth is pushing the limits of what the spaceports can handle, particularly when accounting for events like launch scrubs and major tests. The report said that KSC will reach its limits by early 2029, while Wallops could be at capacity by 2028.

Those launch rates are projected to continue to grow beyond 2030. According to the report, Blue Origin expects to perform more than 50 New Glenn launches a year by 2030 and more than 120 annually by 2035, figures the company has not widely discussed before. The report said the company approached NASA about another launch site on KSC property, although the site identified by NASA, north of Launch Complex 39, “is a protected wetland and would have to undergo lengthy and extensive federal and local review and approval processes.”

Concerns about launch activity exceeding capacity at U.S. spaceports are not new. In March 2025, executives with three major launch companies — Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance — all warned that spaceports would not be able to meet the demand they projected for their vehicles.

A report by the Commercial Space Federation released in May also noted that high demand for launches could overwhelm existing spaceports. Its recommendations included improved coordination and investment in existing spaceports while considering new launch sites, such as inland or sea-based facilities.

The NASA inspector general’s report, though, provided additional details about the conditions at KSC in particular and the demands on infrastructure there. The center’s electrical infrastructure is aging, the report noted, and demand from future Starship launches at Launch Complex 39A could exceed capacity.

Similarly, the center’s gaseous nitrogen pipelines, which extend to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, cannot simultaneously support launches of Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan Centaur or the Space Launch System. The report added that Blue Origin warned that future SLS launches could create “1- to 2-month blackout periods” in the gaseous nitrogen pipeline.

Those problems are exacerbated by funding shortfalls. The report stated that NASA funding for launch facilities and other infrastructure across its field centers has been falling over the last five years when adjusted for inflation. The agency is also restricted from receiving money from companies using launch facilities and has used agreements, like the one with SpaceX for using LC-39A, that limit its ability to recover costs.

Last year’s budget reconciliation bill included $250 million for infrastructure improvements at KSC. “However, NASA has estimated that projects to upgrade and improve infrastructure at the center could cost at least $1 billion,” the report stated. “In our judgment, it is imperative that NASA strategically prioritize funding to address Kennedy’s most pressing common-use infrastructure issues, including those related to electrical power distribution, gas supply and distribution, and transportation.”

In a response included in the report, Brian Hughes, named by NASA as director of KSC last month, accepted recommendations that included prioritizing that $250 million for launch infrastructure, as well as studying the effects of increased launch-related road traffic on the center’s roadways and assessing ways to charge fees for the use of launch infrastructure to fund maintenance and upgrades.

The report added that infrastructure problems at Wallops are not as acute as those at Kennedy, in part because of recent upgrades to the facility’s power distribution system and construction underway on a new bridge connecting Wallops Island to the mainland. However, Wallops may need to invest in additional pipelines for gaseous nitrogen and helium, and the site expects traffic from increased launches to require “frequent and necessary road repairs.”

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Look, I definitely think that House of the Dragon messed up by changing Sheepstealer’s rider, but I’m here for the ride nonetheless.

Anything that delivers growth potential for Rhaena Targaryen is welcome, and it’s about damn time!

She’s spent two seasons moping about the lot she’s been handed, but now she gets a chance to grow emotionally as she deals with the aftermath of the House of the Dragon Season 3 Premiere.

Rhaena Needs to Deal With Her Mistake

There’s no doubt that Rhaena got her cousin killed during House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1, and she nearly got her sister killed as well.

I won’t get into all the flaws in Jacaerys flying low, even though he had already noticed an issue with it earlier in the Battle of the Gullet.

The simple fact is that he wouldn’t have had to do that if it weren’t for Rhaena flying in on a wild dragon in an attempt to prove herself.

Now, Rhaena has to deal with the knowledge that she created the circumstances of Jace’s death. 

Had she just taken some time to work with Sheepstealer and really train with him, Jace’s death could have been avoided.

Others have had to live through these types of mistakes. 

We’ve seen Aemond deal with the mistake of getting Lucaerys killed during House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 10 — and yes, he did initially feel bad for not being able to control Vhagar during that stormy attack.

On A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Maekar has to live with Baelor’s death after hitting him over the head during the Trial of Seven.

While we haven’t had a chance to see what that means for Maekar, he did share his regret over his involvement.

It’s moments like these that allow characters to assess the decisions they’ve made and how they could have done things differently, and Jace’s death opens that door for Rhaena.

After all of this, it’s not like Rhaena can really go to Dragonstone with a dragon she can barely control. Rhaenyra is going to want her head for the death of her son.

So, Rhaena is on her own, which creates opportunities for her development, as she needs to become a hardened woman to survive.

There’s a Chance to Bond with Daemon

As soon as Daemon finds out that his nephew has been killed, he will want answers.

Only Jace saw that Rhaena was riding Sheepstealer. Baela never saw the person attacking her, so she probably thinks that the Greens have tamed a wild dragon.

As that message gets passed onto the rest of the Blacks, Daemon is sure to head out in an attempt to avenge the Crown Prince’s death.

It opens the door for a relationship between a father and a daughter to develop on House of the Dragon Season 3, one that Rhaena has been waiting for all her life.

Daemon effectively ignored the twin since she wasn’t a dragonrider, and that has stuck with her all her life.

As Daemon learns the identity of Sheepstealer’s rider, he’s going to be torn. He’ll want to avenge Jace’s death, but he’ll also want to protect his daughter.

On top of that, he’ll want to make sure Rhaena can tame her dragon better, despite knowing that the ability to tame a wild dragon is near impossible.

Not only can Daemon help with flying, fighting, and training, but he can also help Rhaena deal with the guilt that she’s sure to feel in the aftermath of what transpired. 

He’s made his own mistakes and poor decisions that have led to injury and time lost, and he’s had to harden himself to the world because of them. 

Rhaena can figure out how to shut down the grief and guilt so she can continue to fight for the Blacks and earn some forgiveness.

This is likely where “Nettles” comes into the story, as Rhaena is likely to adopt a new name and persona to handle this change in her character.

While I would love to see the real Nettles storyline play out, I’m ready to see where House of the Dragon Season 3 will take us for Rhaena.

No clickbait. No AI junk. Just fans talking TV.

If that matters to you, I’d love to chat more with you about House of the Dragon and how you hope Rhaena’s story progresses. Sound off in the comments!

It’s an odd-seeming move for a company selling an AI writing assistant.

A BTS fan who rung the doorbell of the band’s Jungkook 133 times has been told they may face deportation after the incident. 

The Brazilian woman, who has not been identified, received a suspended prison term for repeatedly visiting Jungkook’s house despite warnings to stay away.

The woman first started stalking Jungkook in December 2025 and tried to leave letters and photographs at his doorstop “out of love”, she claimed.

This week, a district court in Seoul sentenced the woman to one year in prison, suspended for two years. The woman is also expected to be deported from South Korea. This could be overturned if she successfully appeals the verdict.

The woman is said to have first visited the star’s property in December last year, where, according to court documents, she loitered before throwing items over the wall and letters through gaps in the door (as per BBC). 

Just days later, she visited again where she is said to have rung the doorbell 133 times, which the court said showed an “extreme level of obsession”.

The woman was then arrested on December 13 after following a food delivery worker to enter the property through a side gate. The woman was released the next day following a warning to not visit the property again.

However, this was ignored and further visits continued, something that led police to issue an emergency order that banned her from coming within a hundred metres of the property. In total, the woman is alleged to have visited the property 22 times. 

When that also failed, police referred her to prosecutors this February.  

In other BTS news, the band returned to Busan earlier this month for a two-night stadium concert celebrating their debut anniversary week.

The group hosted ‘BTS World Tour ‘Arirang’ In Busan’ at the Busan Asiad Main Stadium in back-to-back performances on Friday and Saturday night (June 12 and 13), marking their first performance in Busan in more than three years.

Following their 2022 concert ‘Yet to Come in BUSAN’, the two concerts this weekend held deep emotional weight for the group, given they were held in the last venue they performed in before mandatory military service forced them into a temporary hiatus.

As well as that, the second night coincided with their official debut anniversary on June 13, something they celebrated with a massive audience of over 110,000 over the two-night run in Busan.

The homecoming performances come after the band played over 20 shows across seven cities, since the launch of their tour in April, and saw the world premiere of ‘NORMAL (Korean Ver.)’, the Korean rendition of the original track heard on their latest chart-topping album ‘ARIRANG’.

The setlist saw them sail through tracks inspired by the city with ‘Paldogangsan’ and ‘Ma City’ played on the first day, which was followed by tracks like ‘Ddaeng’, ‘Dimple’ and ‘Magic Shop’ on the second night.

Earlier this year, BTS kicked off their huge 2026 and 2027 world tour at Goyang Stadium in South Korea, and broke out tracks from ‘ARIRANG’ for the first time. That gig saw them debut ‘Body to Body’, ‘Hooligan’, ‘2.0’, and ‘Like Animals’, with RM performing seated for much of the set after spraining his ankle in rehearsals.

NME caught the show with Rhian Daly writing: “Throughout, it’s clear that they’re still as committed to BTS as before their enforced break for military service, RM referring to decisions they’ve made so they “can keep doing this for a long time”.

“It’s a sentiment that makes the fireworks-heavy final song, ‘Into The Sun’, feel beautifully optimistic – this might be the end of the show, but BTS’ moment in the sun is far from over.”

The current run of shows are the first tour dates from the K-Pop giants in three years and will see them cover 34 regions with 79 live shows, marking their biggest tour yet. Before kicking off, they held a free concert in Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, which was livestreamed to over 190 countries on Netflix and welcomed roughly 104,000 fans – breaking the record for the largest-ever public concert in South Korea.

There are currently only two UK dates on the group’s 2026/27 itinerary, taking place in London on July 6 and 7, 2026.

Other dates include more slots in North America, Asia and Australia, set for later in 2026 and early 2027. Find all ticket information here, UK tickets here, and international tickets here.

‘ARIRANG’ was given a four-star review from NME, which read: “Much of ‘ARIRANG’ negotiates polar ideas – BTS as heroes or normal people, the buzz of the spotlight and the hush of their private worlds, longing for the euphoric parts of life to continue versus wanting to get off of the ride.”

Since it dropped, BTS have unveiled a surprise hidden ‘ARIRANG‘ track, and NME has created what it considers to be the “dream BTS setlist”. Check it out here.

Florist’s Emily Sprague has a new album on the way. Called Cyano, it includes “Double Moon,” which she released earlier this year, alongside 13 additional tracks. It’s due October 2 via Rvng Intl.

Today, Sprague also shared a new song from the album, “Sing To,” as well as a video directed by their real-life partner V Haddad. The visual intersperses footage from a trip the pair took to Iceland with clips of their Upstate New York home, a fitting backdrop to Sprague’s spectral vocals and wandering synth arcs.

Cyano marks Sprague’s latest LP under her real name, but her first on lead vocals—her most recent record with Florist, Jellywish, came out last year. Although Sprague has yet to announce any tour plans in support of Cyano, she does have a show coming up this month with Grouper. The duo will perform at New York City’s Town Hall on September 15.

Cyano:
01 Double Moon
02 Garden of Charms
03 Harmony in Your Hands
04 Inscription of Wind
05 Lava Surrounds
06 Listening Thru
07 Night Woven
08 Noon Liquid Ore
09 Rising
10 Sing To
11 Spiraling to the Place
12 Transfiguring
13 Under Tone
14 Weather Melody

A woman with severe Alzheimer’s disease who spent years communicating in monosyllables started initiating conversations after receiving a large dose of psilocybin. The woman, who also had urinary incontinence and was unable to get around without assistance, also regained control of her bladder and experienced improved mobility in the weeks after taking the drug. While further research is required, the case adds to evidence that psychedelics can acutely alter cognition and brain function.

“Her facial expressions became much more animated; she made prolonged eye contact, smiled responsively and moved with greater agility,” says Marcus Lago at the Ankh Cross Association in São Paulo, Brazil, an organisation that focuses on holistic medical practices. “During a later session she spontaneously said: ‘It feels good to come here.’”

The woman, who has not been named, is 83 and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 10 years ago. She had been living with a marked decline in function for around half that time.

With the consent of her son, the woman was given 5 grams of the Enigma strain of the highly potent magic mushroom species Psilocybe cubensis, administered orally. She initially began sweating profusely and entered a prolonged deep sleep-like state. But around 19 hours later, her son reported her initiating a conversation that included her memories and reflections, which lasted around 4 hours.

Over the subsequent days and weeks, Lago and his colleagues observed her regaining urinary continence, dressing herself and spontaneously entering conversations. Off the success of her first trip, about a month later she was given another 3 grams of psilocybin, which prompted her to describe surfing with her son on a peaceful island.

“She selected and put on coordinated clothing independently, went to the television room expecting breakfast, recognised contextual details such as a rented car, noticed when someone was unexpectedly absent and repeatedly remained continent for periods in which incontinence had previously been routine,” says Lago.

The researchers have stressed that her Alzheimer’s has not been reversed, but she may have some residual functional capacity that psychedelics can tap into. We know that psilocybin activates serotonin receptors in the brain, which is thought to boost its plasticity and alter communication between its networks.

David Nutt at Imperial College London says he has heard of similar reports of psychedelics improving brain function in people with neurodegenerative decline. “These accounts don’t prove psychedelics promote longevity and maintain good brain function but are consistent with [their] known anti-inflammatory activity,” he says.

The cause of Alzheimer’s is not entirely clear, but the leading idea is the amyloid hypothesis. This suggests that the clumping of a misfolded protein called amyloid-beta between brain cells triggers the abnormal formation of a protein called tau inside cells to form tangles. This then leads to neuroinflammation, disruption of neural connections and cell death. “Some brain dysfunctions can be due to one brain circuit suppressing another and psychedelics can disrupt such effects,” says Nutt.

However, it is unclear what effects psilocybin could have long term. “I have a litany of concerns about the validity of the report and the ethics overall,” says Albert Garcia-Romeu at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who is involved in a study investigating psilocybin’s effects on depression in people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease. “The paper only described the month after the first session and does not specify any longer follow-up duration, or how long or whether improvements persisted.”

Garcia-Romeu adds that this is a single case report so cannot be extrapolated out to people with Alzheimer’s as a whole. What’s more, her diagnosis was based on symptom assessment, not more reliable methods such as biomarker testing or neuroimaging, he says.

However, some are encouraged enough to want further research into psilocybin’s potential here. “This is a pretty dramatic case study and while we have to be careful to not make too many conclusions based on one anecdotal event, the findings do suggest a trial may be warranted,” says Rudolph Tanzi at Harvard University.

Topics:

• psychedelics/
• Alzheimer’s disease

TAMPA, Fla. — The White House has issued an executive order aiming to unify and accelerate U.S. development of quantum technologies, including space systems that could enable next-generation navigation, sensing and secure communications.

The “Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation” order, signed by U.S. President Donald Trump June 22, gives NASA 120 days to submit a five-year plan for “developing and extending civilian quantum sensing and networking for space applications.”

Other agencies were also tasked with producing five-year plans to translate atomic-scale physics into federally backed research and applications.

The order directs the Department of War to identify at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects within 60 days to prioritize for fielding by Sept. 30, 2028.

It also establishes the Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science effort, or QC-ADDS, to develop a quantum computer for scientific applications.

“This national effort shall pursue development of a quantum computer at a scale intended to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery,” the order stated, “with the intent to deliver at least one such computer to a Department of Energy facility and, to the extent possible, make it available to the scientific community.”

Trump also signed a separate executive order directing federal agencies to strengthen cryptographic protections for the country’s sensitive data, critical infrastructure and digital economy against threats posed by future quantum computers.

Industry collaboration

The executive orders came shortly after U.S.-based quantum technology firm Infleqtion announced America’s Quantum Space Initiative, an industry coalition aiming to advance demonstrations to operational capability.

Founding partners include Voyager Technologies, Armada, Monarch Quantum and the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Quantum is moving fast, and so is the competition,” said Matt Kinsella, Infleqtion’s CEO.

“The science is proven and the systems are coming. We are grateful to President Trump for making American quantum leadership a national priority today, because the time to act is now.”

Infleqtion has been working with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for about a decade, including on foundational components for the Cold Atom Lab, a facility launched to the International Space Station in 2018 to study quantum behavior in ultra-cold gases.

Kinsella said the company aims to deploy a quantum gravity gradiometer with NASA and JPL before the end of the decade to measure tiny changes in gravity from orbit, enabling more precise space situational awareness and data on and below Earth’s surface.

“We’re not talking percentage improvements,” he told SpaceNews, “these are 10x to 1,000x improvement in precision when you swap [existing] sensors to quantum sensors.”

Years of experimentation have “verified that quantum in space is important and it’s real,” he said, laying the foundation for a more coordinated push to turn the technology into operational infrastructure.

While quantum sensing is likely to mature first in space via capabilities such as Infleqtion’s gravity gradiometer, according to Kinsella, he said secure communications and advanced atomic clocks are likely to follow to greatly improve timing and navigation.

“I think it’ll be a while before we see quantum computers in space,” he added. “We need to make them useful here on planet Earth first.”

High stakes

China has also been investing heavily in quantum communications, Kinsella noted, with a focus on encrypted communications between Earth and space.

“I would anticipate they continue to invest in that and that will become increasingly important as time goes on,” he said, pointing to a global race to realize a capability that could reshape military communications as space becomes an increasingly strategic domain.

In a conflict, he said, the loss of GPS and communications would create major vulnerabilities for the United States and its allies, but “with quantum sensors in space, you can effectively recreate GPS with turbocharged capabilities, working in tandem with things here on the Earth.”

Getting operational

Having proven the underlying physics, Kinsella said remaining hurdles include engineering systems that can survive launch, operate in radiation and continue performing in orbit without repair.

“This isn’t really necessarily physics challenges at this point, these are kind of systems engineering challenges,” he continued.

America’s Quantum Space Initiative aims to bring together the disparate parts of the emerging ecosystem to help solve this.

Voyager and Armada are supporting efforts to get assets into space, while the University of Colorado Boulder brings academic expertise. Monarch, which is already working with Infleqtion on the gravity gradiometer, aims to contribute the photonics and laser capabilities that are key for quantum links.

The initiative is about “getting all the different pieces of the puzzle to take quantum from building it here on land, getting it up into space and then having it start to do useful things,” Kinsella said, with more partners likely to be announced over the next year.

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This won’t make the already-controversial AI training endeavor any more popular.

Wembley Stadium has confirmed a rule change for Harry Styles’ show tomorrow amid an extreme heatwave in the UK.

The former One Direction singer is due to continue his record-breaking ‘Together, Together’ residency at the venue tomorrow night (June 23), with Shania Twain once again appearing as a special guest.

The show is still set to go ahead as planned, but Wembley has relaxed its usual water bottle policy due to the severe warm weather expected in the capital.

While metal bottles are not usually permitted inside the stadium, guests will be allowed to bring metal or hard plastic water bottles to Tuesday’s show, where they can be filled at free refill stations.

Empty soft-plastic bottles up to 500ml are also permitted, while bottled water sold across all bars will be reduced by 50 per cent. Free water points will be available in the stadium. Free sun cream will also be available from information points inside Wembley.

Fans have been advised to stay hydrated, take breaks in shaded areas, wear sun cream, dress in loose, breathable clothing and avoid arriving too early.

The warning comes as London faces extreme temperatures this week, with highs in the mid-30s forecast for Tuesday and a red Met Office extreme heat warning in place from Wednesday morning into Thursday night.

Doors open at 5pm, with Shania Twain due on stage at 6.55pm. Styles is expected to begin his set at 8.15pm, with curfew set for 10.30pm.

Styles’ Wembley residency began on June 12 and is due to continue through to July 4. His remaining London dates are June 23, 26, 27 and 29, plus July 1, 3 and 4.

The 12-night run is the longest single-artist residency in Wembley Stadium history, surpassing Coldplay’s 10-night run in 2025 and Taylor Swift’s eight-night solo-artist record in 2024.

Styles kicked off the residency earlier this month by paying tribute to the late David Hockney and reflecting on his One Direction days.

He dedicated ‘Taste Back’ “to all the ravers in the house”, as a snippet of Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ was interpolated into the song, while a brief burst of Talking Heads’ ‘This Must Be The Place’ was introduced to ‘Treat People With Kindness’. During ‘Dance No More’, the pop star’s band played part of the groove from Happy Mondays’ ‘Step On’, while Styles sang a snatch of Gorillaz’s ‘Clint Eastwood’.

He also recently played a special orchestral show as part of his own Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank Centre, performing reworked solo tracks, rarities and covers with the Jules Buckley Orchestra and House Gospel Choir.

His fourth album ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ came out in March and NME gave it four stars, noting: “Largely, Styles taking a new approach to things really works – ‘Kiss All The Time…’ feels like an album that you’ll really want to spend a lot of time with, letting all its layers envelope you.”

Canada’s Angine de Poitrine were among the guests on last night’s (June 21) episode of Later… With Jools Holland. The masked math rock duo broke out all their signature trappings—uncanny choreography, microtonal riffs, and lots and lots of polka dots—for a performance of “Fabienk,” from their new EP, Vol. II. Also, have you noticed that their guitarist (that’s Khn de Poitrine to you; the drummer is Klek) plays barefoot? ’Cause I sure didn’t—until today.

Last night’s other performers included Arlo Parks, Sam Smith, and Shania Twain. Holland himself hopped behind the piano to accompany Twain, who covered Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Watch Angine de Poitrine and Shania Twain on Later… below.

Read about Vol. II in The Best Music of 2026 So Far.

WASHINGTON — MDA Space is buying smallsat manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) for $620 million, giving the Canadian company greater access to the lucrative U.S. government market.

MDA Space announced June 19 that it would buy BCT from RTX, parent company of Raytheon, in an all-cash deal. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year pending regulatory approvals, including a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

BCT, founded in 2008 and acquired by Raytheon in 2020, builds smallsats and smallsat components. It has more than 400 employees in two Colorado facilities. It is projected to generate $160 million in revenue in 2026, up from $115 million in 2023, and is cash-flow positive.

In a call with analysts, MDA executives described the acquisition as a strategic move to allow the company to win more business from the U.S. government, particularly in defense. About 75% of BCT’s revenue comes from defense work.

“Historically, we have served U.S. defense customers as a merchant supplier,” said Mike Greenley, chief executive of MDA Space. “BCT advances this dynamic as it provides us with an established U.S. presence, proven program delivery to U.S. defense customers and a pathway to pursue classified work and compete for prime contracts in our own right.”

“This is a strategic foothold in the world’s most important defense market,” he added.

There may also be opportunities to incorporate BCT’s products into MDA Space’s own spacecraft. “BCT actually is a candidate member of our current supply chain,” Greenley said. “That’s going to be an interesting synergy to explore for us as we go forward.”

The deal, he said, fits into the company’s plans to grow through mergers and acquisitions. “We’ve been clear the last two to three years that in M&A, we will always look for two things. One would be vertical integration opportunities to be able to pull key technologies from our supply chain into the business to increase control over our pipelines, and the second would be for geographic distribution, primarily in the United States or Europe.”

Greenley said he did not know why RTX decided to sell BCT, only that MDA Space became aware of the sales process and got involved. RTX did not immediately reply to questions about why it decided to sell BCT.

“It seemed like it was just an asset that they wanted to be able to put out on the market,” he said, noting he was unaware of any issues that might have prompted RTX to sell it.

The acquisition of BCT comes a year after MDA Space bought SatixFy, an Israeli satellite chipmaker. Greenley did not rule out additional acquisitions.

“We do have a strong short list of candidates” in both the United States and Europe, he said of acquisition targets. That would include companies that would strengthen MDA Space’s U.S. presence, he added.

Related

Grief, trauma, sisterhood, Lifetime’s latest thriller truly has it all.

Don’t Trust the Girls Upstairs is a compelling watch, and much of that is due to the adaptation of an acclaimed novel and the talent behind bringing this story to the small screen.

We had the distinct pleasure of speaking to the incomparable Elisabeth Röhm about adapting such an emotional piece, casting Remy Ma in such an emotionally challenging role, and Lifetime’s initiatives that champion women in front of and behind the camera.

Don’t Trust the Girls Upstairs is a layered suspense thriller whose strengths lie in the exploration of the family dynamics among Remy Ma’s Ashley, her daughter Luna, and niece Serena.

The film quickly reveals a story that’s intent on exploring mental illness as we learn that Ashley’s late sister, Courtney, battled some mental health issues — the effects of which linger throughout the film.

Her impact touches our primary characters in more ways than one.

It sows seeds of uncertainty, distrust, fear, and more when the nature of Courtney’s death still hangs heavily in the background while Ashley and her family struggle to adapt to the inclusion of Serena into her family.

The film delves into the complexities of sisterly and familial bonds, stigmatization of mental illness, and so much more, with Remy Ma carrying the film with a strong, heartfelt performance as a woman trying to navigate her own grief while protecting her family.

But at the crux of this film, the most compelling performances come from Sasha Rojen and Aliyah Marc as the contentious and complex dynamic between the cousins unfolds in really engrossing ways.

Viewers will be in for quite a ride that’s as suspenseful as it is emotional, which is something we had the pleasure of talking to Röhm about below.

I’ve watched you in so many things, and I love all of your movies and your Lifetime movies. And this one, of course, was really great. What exactly attracted you to this project?

Well, first of all, I’m a huge fan. Kara Feifer, my producing partner, and I are big, big fans of this sister duo writing team, Liv Constantine.

We did a movie called Wife Stalker, which Keshia Knight Pulliam starred in, and Grace and Trey Byers, which we did for Lifetime. So we already had this great relationship with them.

We read this book called My Sister’s Daughter, and we were like, “This is a great thriller.” And we, thank God, had a partner in Lifetime that felt the same about the book.

And so we then did an adaptation with a really wonderful screenwriter named Crystal Verge.

Then David Weaver, who’s a fantastic director, came on board and said that he would love to collaborate with us again. We’ve worked with him many times in the past. Then we were like, “Oh my God, Remy Ma wants to be in this movie.”

It was just a big, like pinch-me moment because we’re all just such big fans, and to see her make a transition into a starring role in a movie was really exciting.

So yeah, I’m so thrilled that you loved it.

I was going to ask you about that, too. You got Remy Ma to star in this, and I love how she brought such vulnerability to the role. Why was she the perfect person for it?

Oh, I’m so glad.

Yeah. I think what Kara, David Weaver, the network, and I — we all felt that it was a real character, you know? She was really playing another character.

And I think being vulnerable, like you said, or really having to dig deep in some real acting chops and sort of go through this very tough journey, losing her sister and everything that happens after that, it’s just a challenging role.

And I think she wanted that challenge, and she killed it. So I’m really excited for people to see the movie on Saturday.

Speaking of that, it’s a story that’s so deeply rooted in trauma. But of course it’s also this suspenseful, twisty Lifetime thriller.

How do you strike the right balance of making it really edgy and suspenseful while also acknowledging this story of trauma and grief?

Well, I do feel that we can make fun, commercial movies that can have a little bit of that twisty-turny, higher-level kind of thriller genre.

But I definitely think we’re drawn to telling stories that are hard and important and that deal with tough topics that Lifetime is incredibly responsible to.

And I can’t tell you how many movies we’ve made that have had either some component, a call to action, a 1-800 number, whatever it may be, really addressing these issues that the stories tap into.

Whether it was Girl in the Basement or Girl in Room 13, they’ve really taken that risk, taken it very seriously, and have been very responsible about the project.

Now, Don’t Trust the Girls Upstairs is a book adaptation, so it’s not ripped from the headlines. It’s not really a true crime. But it does delve into some of the deeper topics of generational trauma and mental health issues.

And I really do hope that when people see it, whether they just enjoy the ride or things come up for them, that they do dig a little bit deeper into some of those topics.

I definitely think the movie is an invitation to reflect in that way.

You just mentioned it’s a book-to-screen adaptation. Do you find it easier or more challenging to have source material to work with?

We at Röhm Feifer Entertainment mostly have either life rights or book rights, so we believe in the underlying IP for everything. I think it’s an incredible blueprint.

I think it has a built-in audience, generally speaking. So there’s something very meaningful about that.

True crime is harder because you have to wait for the trial to be adjudicated, or you have to get some sort of life right.

So it’s a more complicated path than just getting book rights and doing an adaptation.

I loved the parallels between Ashley and Courtney’s relationship and that dynamic blossoming again between Serena and Luna. It was contentious at times, but also felt like a very relatable sibling relationship.

Was it intentional to have those dynamics paralleling one another?

Well, I definitely think David Weaver did a great job finding those themes, using the flashbacks as a way to really connect back to Courtney and their childhood relationship.

So that was a really good sort of B-storyline, that relationship and how it was growing and how it connected to these sisters in the past.

Definitely, that’s also in the book. I do recommend people also read the book, My Sister’s Daughter by Liv Constantine. It’s great.

And I think it feels very relatable, even though there are the great classic twists and turns that make a thriller exciting, and you buckle up, and you’re going on this ride of all these ups and downs of this type of drama.

But I think that it does have very strong, meaningful themes in it that include trauma, sibling rivalry, and mental health issues, all within the family.

And then seeing it generationally, you know? Are they going to follow this legacy and this family into the next generation with these two girls upstairs that you shouldn’t trust?

I love stories about generational trauma, and I thought the balance of all of that was really, really good, considering it’s also such a massive suspense thriller.

I couldn’t predict anything that was happening next.

Well, that’s good.

I thought I could predict something, and then I’m like, wait, what? It was very engrossing.

That’s good.

Listen, I think, like I said, either the play is the thing or a great book. And I think the Liv Constantine sisters really, their books give you all of that. So, you know, you’re starting with a really good tool at the jump.

Of course, you tend to wear many hats. How does being an actor and then going into producing and directing inform how you approach storytelling?

As far as being a director, I think it’s all about the actors and really being prepared for them and building worlds for them in which they feel safe to play in, and that the trust is built, and they can surprise themselves and surprise the audience.

That is my greatest passion, whether it was myself doing it in the past or really creating an environment where the actors can succeed and go on an incredible journey.

And then, as far as the producing goes, Kara Feifer, also my producing partner, is a former actor.

And she, I think we really do approach our material thinking, are these roles that actors are going to want to play? Is the storytelling complicated?

I definitely think that’s why we lean towards true crime and true stories as our brand at Röhm Feifer, because those are the great roles to play.

So I think we do think actor-forward. We create an environment of respect and nurturing. I think that’s distinctly female. And we love what we do from the many different facets of how we’ve approached it over the years of our careers.

I’ve noticed that speaking with other people who’ve gone from acting to directing and producing. I think they tend to make some of the best directors and producers because they come at it from a different angle.

But again, if you’ve been an actor, you know that the crew is your family. The camera operators are your family. Script is your family. Craft is your family.

So I also think when you are approaching producing and directing, having been a series regular or somebody that’s done a lot of work on set, I think you really just respect the cinema family that you’re building, and or crew, and or teamsters, anybody, because this is your world.

And so that impacts just sort of the day-to-day as well.

You work with Lifetime pretty extensively, and one thing I love is their commitment to putting more women behind and in front of the camera. What has that experience been like for you?

Yeah, I think the Broad Focus program is one of the most effective in the industry.

You know, you see Lifetime hosting events, The Power Women’s Breakfast. And I do feel that the women’s network is something that’s real and actionable, and it’s actualized through these programs.

Like putting directors behind the camera who were former actresses, like Angela Bassett or Kyra Sedgwick, myself.

I know so many people who’ve been given their first opportunity to explore if they have a place behind the camera as a storyteller.

I think, as women, particularly if we were actors for decades, we never saw women in leadership roles. I was so seldom directed by women. I don’t know if I could have even dreamt it for myself because, unless we see it, it’s hard to fathom that it’s something that you can do.

To have that opportunity and the veil lifted for me by Lifetime, I will forever be grateful.

I think that’s why I’m so dedicated to continuing to work with them. And also A&E Global Media, just the whole conglomerate, really. So even the television series generally that we’ve sold and developed at Röhm Feifer have been through A&E Global Media.

So we love them, and we continue to partner because it’s just been such a great, empowering experience, and just phenomenal women and men over there running that network.

Before I let you go, what are three words you’d use to describe Don’t Trust the Girls Upstairs to entice people to tune in?

Tragic, surprising, emotional.

Yeah, and I think that will surprise people, that it’s so emotional.

And Remy did such a great job, and Garfield [Wilson] and the young ladies who play the girls. But I definitely think it’s more of an emotional thriller than you might expect, just because it’s so sad.

The girls were fantastic. I absolutely loved watching them because that’s some very heavy material to tackle.

They’re little superstars.

We’ve already worked with one of them again since then, because we just finished another movie, and we worked with her again. So yeah, I think they’re really special.

I think great things are ahead for them, and I think our fans are going to be very happy with this. So we’re excited to see how it does for the network.

Don’t Trust the Girls Upstairs premieres Saturday, June 20, at 8/7c on Lifetime.

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The Wall Street Journal reviewed 1,105 videos along with guidance given to creators for crafting their posts.

The Weeknd kicked off the European leg of his ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ tour in Copenhagen this week – watch footage below.

The Canadian artist performed the first of two sold-out shows at Parken Stadium on Friday night (June 19), having played two dates at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium earlier this month.

‘After Hours Til Dawn’ has become the highest-grossing tour ever by a male solo artist since its launch in 2022, surpassing $1billion in gross revenue and selling more than 7.5million tickets.

Production at the show includes a 40-foot gold sculpture created by Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama, the largest fine-art commission ever created for a live concert production, and the staging also features sprawling golden ruins, immersive visuals, lasers and flames.

A gargantuan 36-track setlist leaned heavily on The Weeknd’s latest album ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’, while also taking in material from across his career. Playboi Carti also appeared during the show, joining him on ‘Timeless’ and ‘RATHER LIE’.

The Weeknd’s full setlist at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen on June 19 was: 

‘Baptized In Fear’
‘Open Hearts’
‘Wake Me Up’
‘After Hours’
‘Starboy’
‘Heartless’
‘Faith’
‘Cry For Me’
‘São Paulo’
‘Take My Breath’
‘Sacrifice’
‘How Do I Make You Love Me?’
‘Eva’
‘Can’t Feel My Face’
‘Lost In The Fire’
‘Often’
‘Given Up On Me’
‘I Was Never There’
‘Given Up On Me’
‘The Hills’
‘Timeless’
‘RATHER LIE’
‘Creepin’’
‘Niagara Falls’
‘One Of The Girls’
‘Stargirl Interlude’
‘Out Of Time’
‘I Feel It Coming’
‘Die For You’
‘Is There Someone Else?’
‘Wicked Games’
‘Call Out My Name’
‘The Abyss’
‘Professional’
‘Save Your Tears’
‘Less Than Zero’
‘Blinding Lights’
‘Without A Warning’
‘House Of Balloons’
‘Moth To A Flame’

The tour continues with multi-night stadium runs in Munich, Lille, Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Milan, Frankfurt, Warsaw and Stockholm.

The Weeknd will then return to the UK later this summer for five nights at Wembley Stadium on August 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19, before heading to Ireland for two shows at Dublin’s Croke Park on August 22 and 23. Find any remaining tickets here.

After the European run, the tour will continue into Asia, with dates scheduled in Tokyo, Jakarta, Singapore, Seoul, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, the final dates of the ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ tour.

The dates continue The Weeknd’s partnership with Global Citizen, with a portion of every ticket sold going towards education access for underprivileged children and food relief. To date, he has donated more than $8.5million to the XO Humanitarian Fund and Global Citizen through the tour.

At a show in Brazil in April, he debuted the energetic new single ‘Rio’, a collaboration with Anitta.

A man died last night (June 20) after falling during Goose’s show at New York’s Madison Square Garden (MSG). The NYPD told CBS News that they found the 51-year-old concertgoer unconscious and responsive around 10 P.M. He had fallen from MSG’s 300 level, which sits on an elevated platform above the stadium floor. The man, identified by police as Paul Kueker, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

In a statement to CBS, Madison Square Garden said: ”While we await the police report on the tragedy at last night’s Goose concert, we are deeply saddened by the loss of a fan’s life at Madison Square Garden. Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the concertgoer.”

Goose’s Friday night show was part of their ongoing “Big Tour,” which continues tonight in Central Park as part of New York’s annual SummerStage series. In a statement shared to Instagram earlier today, the band said they were “deeply saddened and heartbroken” to learn about the Madison Square Garden incident. “We extend our deepest sympathy to everyone affected,” they wrote. “Thank you to the emergency personnel and venue staff who stepped in with care and support.”

PITTSBURGH — Lunar lander developer Astrobotic decided to sell to Voyager Technologies so it could quickly scale up to meet the projected demands of NASA’s lunar base initiative.

Voyager announced June 2 that it reached an agreement to acquire Astrobotic for $162 million in cash and stock and the assumption of $9 million in debt. The deal includes up to an additional $129 million in earnout payments contingent on meeting performance milestones.

The announcement took many in the industry by surprise. Astrobotic is a 19-year-old company that had not relied on significant outside investment, choosing instead to bootstrap the company with customer contracts. That included NASA awards for the Peregrine lunar lander, launched in 2024, and its Griffin-1 lander, which the company unveiled June 15 for launch late this year.

In an interview at the event, John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said the decision to sell the company to Voyager came after concluding that it was the fastest approach to scaling up the company to meet NASA’s needs after the agency announced its lunar base plans at the Ignition event in March.

“Fundamentally, we need to move fast,” he said. “With Moon Base coming out, we needed to scale, and we needed a partner that could do that, and Voyager is that in every way.”

Selling to Voyager, he said, would allow it to scale faster than if it took outside investment. “The alternate path would have been raise some money, maybe try to go IPO after that. That probably takes 18 months all in,” he said. “With the partnership with Voyager, we basically have access to public markets imminently when we close. That gives us an ability to scale now.”

The acquisition was part of Voyager’s “strategic lunar initiative” announced earlier this year that includes a much smaller investment in Max Space, a startup developing inflatable habitats that could be used as part of a lunar base.

“We’ve been mapping out the space infrastructure company for many, many years,” said Matt Magaña, president of defense and national security at Voyager, in an interview. He said what was attractive about Astrobotic was not just its lunar lander work but also its development of other lunar infrastructure, notably power systems.

“Every time that we mapped out what companies were there, what companies that we feel could be a great partnership,” he said, “Astrobotic was at the center of that map every single time.”

Neither Magaña nor Thornton said which company initiated the discussions that led to the acquisition. “We both saw it as a real strong strategic partnership and an opportunity to meet the moment,” Thornton said.

“We’re geared to move very fast. We’re geared to be partners with folks,” Magaña added.

Voyager said that Astrobotic would remain in Pittsburgh and become the center of Voyager’s overall lunar programs. Thornton said Astrobotic planned to expand its presence there.

“It’ll be a foundational change for us as a business, for Astrobotic, because for 19 years we’ve been basically living contract to contract, and piecing those contracts together into bigger things,” he said. “This is a fundamental game change for us, because now we can be strategic.”

“This is really what we needed in this moment with Moon Base. The opportunities abound, and if we weren’t ready to move at the speed that NASA needs, we would be left behind,” he concluded. “This is the perfect partnership to meet the moment.”

Related

Summer may be running short on content, but we still have some characters who have resonated with us.

Whether they were navigating grief, confronting impossible choices, or relentlessly chasing the truth, these Characters of the Week drove some of the week’s strongest stories.

From a long-overdue spotlight on Criminal Minds’ Luke Alvez to a supernatural reckoning in Widow’s Bay and a scene-stealing journalist in I Will Find You, these are the characters who left the biggest impression on us.

Luke Alvez – Criminal Minds

The emotional development for Luke Alvez has been a long time coming, but Criminal Minds Season 19 has delivered.

Just after the heartbreaking loss of Roxy (and we all felt that one!), Criminal Minds Season 19 Episode 5 had Luke investigating the death of his friend, Tom.

In a shocking turn of events, we learned that Tom was definitely murdered, but not by the man holding the gun.

Throughout the hour, Luke worked through his grief, even opening up to JJ and acknowledging that it wouldn’t be fair to her. I’ll give JJ her props — nobody owns grief, and she stepped up in the way Luke needed her.

We got to see depth for Luke’s character, and he figured out the mystery behind the murder. He even stepped back when he thought it was best for the case, showing maturity and understanding.

In the end, only Luke could solve the case because knowing someone well is the difference between making assumptions and considering all the facts.

Tom Loftis – Widow’s Bay

Tom spent most of the season doing what he does best: avoiding uncomfortable truths and hoping they’ll somehow resolve themselves.

Unfortunately for him, Widow’s Bay isn’t the kind of place that lets you ignore reality for long.

By the finale, Tom was faced with an impossible choice. Kill Ruth and potentially save his son, or spare a woman who had spent her life helping others and risk everything. 

What made the story so compelling wasn’t the supernatural mystery but watching Tom realize that every answer only created bigger problems.

Just when he thought he understood the island’s curse, he learned that Evan wasn’t merely caught up in the story. He was the story.

Tom may have spent years trying to protect his son from Widow’s Bay, but now he’s staring down a future in which keeping Evan safe could require sacrifices no parent should ever have to make. 

The storm may have passed, but Tom’s troubles are only beginning. And considering the island just rang up eight more sacrifices like it was updating a grocery list, he’s going to need all the luck he can get.

Rachel Mills – I Will Find You

If you’re looking for a fun binge that makes “Next Episode” feel like a little treat. It’s twisty, entertaining, and stacked with a great cast, and as we mentioned in our I Will Find You Review, it’s just downright fun.

And at the center of all that action is Rachel Mills. It may be David Burroughs fighting for his life, but it’s Rachel who emerges as the MVP of this limited series.

As a formerly disgraced journalist and the devoted aunt of the missing kid in question, she’s the one who believes in David from the beginning and becomes the ride-or-die who goes on quite an adventure to prove it.

Rachel is such a dynamic character that she commands every scene that she’s in.

Her interest lies in finding the truth, doing what’s best for her loved ones, and clearing David’s name in the process, and she takes all of those tasks seriously.

She’s a force of nature, not without her flaws, but arguably the most compelling character of the series.

Over to you, TV Fanatics! Sound off below with your favorite characters from the week.

NASA’s Mars rovers have accomplished a whole lot since the first one landed on the red planet in the late ’90s, but even the latest members of the fleet still have plenty of limitations. For one, they’re very slow; Perseverance, which NASA considers a “standout,” achieves a top speed of just under .1 mph on flat ground. On top of that, the rough terrain is hard on the rovers’ wheels, and steep slopes with hazards like rocks and sand pose a real challenge, sometimes requiring long detours to reach certain targets. But this week, NASA showed off its progress on a prototype that boasts more advanced capabilities: the Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, or Ernest.

The space agency has been testing Ernest in the Colorado Desert, exploring new approaches that could be used for future missions on Mars and the moon. Ernest has four wheels, in contrast to the current Mars’ rovers’ six, and is four feet long, though a version that would be used for an actual mission would be double the size. And, it can individually lift its wheels to step on or over obstacles. In the recent tests in the desert, the prototype drove for a total of over 37 hours across seven days, covering roughly 16 miles, according to NASA. It hit a top speed of about .6 mph.

“You could do a science road trip across the Moon — or Mars — with this vehicle,” said James Keane, a JPL planetary scientist working on lunar missions. Going back to NASA’s Sojourner rover, the Mars rovers have relied on a passive suspension system, the rocker-bogie system, to keep the weight constant across their wheels. Now, though, engineers are trying out active suspension with Ernest to achieve greater mobility. “Two powered joints in front articulate a gimbal that allows the rover to drive using different gaits like squirming, wheel-walking, and obstacle-climbing,” NASA says.

It can switch between active and passive suspension depending on the task and energy needs, and thanks to its four steerable wheels, it can drive in any direction. There have already been multiple iterations of the Ernest prototype since the program began in 2022, and the team has tested nearly a dozen active suspension configurations. The latest version also has “enhanced independent decision-making capabilities.” The goal with Ernest is to develop the technology for rovers that can cover more ground than those that came before them, and faster, with less reliance on human controllers back on Earth.

Craig Finn is staring down the barrel of a jam-packed 2026. The Hold Steady frontman already announced the second round of his joint tour with Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, set for June, and a European trek supporting the Mountain Goats in October. To those, Finn has now added a November run of full-band headlining shows, billed to Craig Finn & the Band of Forgiveness, in support of his latest solo LP, last year’s Always Been. Below, check out the full rundown of his upcoming performances.

“I put together The Band of Forgiveness last year with three Minneapolis-based musicians—Nelson Devereaux, Joe Strachan, and Ethan Elseth,” Finn shared in a press statement. “I had imagined a group of musicians that would help me take on some of my songs in a unique approach, one that let the stories shine through but still brought a high level of musicality…I was thrilled how the tour went—each show the band ascended higher, and we were able to create dramatic musical narratives that were exciting and satisfying.”

Read about Finn’s A Legacy of Rentals in The 38 Best Rock Albums of 2022.

Craig Finn:
07-09 St. Paul, MN – The Fitzgerald Theater *
07-11 State College, PA – The State Theatre *
07-12 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg *
07-14 Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom *
07-15 Rockport, MA – Shalin Liu Performance Center *
07-16 Worcester, MA – Off the Rails *
07-17 Tarrytown, NY – Tarrytown Music Hall *
07-20 Homer, NY – Center for the Arts of Homer *
07-21 Bellmore, NY – The Bellmore Movies and Showplace *
10-05 Helsinki, Finland – Kuudes Linja ^
10-07 Stockholm, Sweden – Nalen ^
10-08 Oslo, Norway – Vulkan Arena ^
10-10 Copenhagen, Denmark, Pumpehuset ^
10-11 Berlin, Germany – Metropol ^
10-12 Hamburg, Germany – Christianskirche Altona ^
10-13 Ghent, Belgium – De Centrale ^
10-14 Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg Grote Zaal ^
10-16 Manchester, England – Albert Hall ^+
10-18 Dublin, Ireland – Vicar Street ^+
10-19 Glasgow, Scotland – Barrowland Ballroom ^+
10-21 London, England – Hackney Church ^+
10-22 London, England – Hackney Church ^+
10-23 Bristol, England – Bristol Beacon ^+
11-10 Portland, OR – Polaris Hall +
11-11 Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern +
11-13 Novato, CA – Hopmonk +
11-14 Carson City, NV – Brewery Arts Center +
11-15 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel +
11-17 Los Angeles, CA – Sid the Cat Auditorium +
11-19 Milwaukee, WI – The Vivarium +
11-20 Berwyn, IL – Fitzgerald’s +
11-21 Berwyn, IL – Fitzgerald’s +
11-22 Madison, WI – Atwood Music Hall +

* with Patterson Hood
^ with the Mountain Goats
+ full band show

TAMPA, Fla. — Jio Platforms, which owns India’s largest telco, is looking to lease broadband capacity from global satellite constellations to jumpstart its own sovereign low Earth orbit (LEO) network in the country.

“Jio connected India on the ground — now, we must connect India from the skies,” Akash Ambani, the company’s managing director, said June 19.

“There are still the remotest of villages, island communities, and border outposts where Jio network cannot reach. For them, satellite connectivity will be the bridge to the rest of India.”

Ambani said “partnering with leading global constellation providers by leasing satellite capacity” would help accelerate the availability of services ahead of building a longer-term sovereign capability.

“This dual approach will enable Jio to meet India’s connectivity needs faster, while laying the foundation for the Indian satellite broadband platform of global scale,” he added.

The same day, Jio submitted draft papers to India’s capital markets regulator for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

India has been moving to open its market to foreign space players and investors in recent years, encouraging LEO operators pushing for access to the world’s most populous nation.

However, India’s government tightened security and data compliance rules for satellite connectivity last year, including new obligations for national security, sovereignty and promotion of local industry participation.

SpaceX won a key approval from India’s space regulator in July 2025 to provide Starlink LEO services, but has yet to launch commercially in the country nearly a year later.

Jio’s local rival Bharti Enterprises owns a part of France-based Eutelsat, which operates OneWeb, currently the only other operational LEO broadband network as Amazon prepares to enter the market this year.

Ambani said Jio will also build its own ground infrastructure in India to anchor its LEO ambitions.

“These ground stations will support our partner constellations,” he continued, “as well our own future satellites, creating an end-to-end satellite broadband ecosystem from space to ground.”

Citing unnamed sources, India’s Economic Times reported June 18 that Jio is planning a constellation of around 1,600 to 1,650 satellites at about 650 kilometers above Earth.

The constellation could reportedly cost between $10 billion and $15 billion and include a direct-to-device capability.

However, while the Economic Times report said India is likely to support Jio in securing spectrum for the constellation, it added that the government is unlikely to allow the kind of inter-satellite laser links Starlink uses to reduce reliance on ground stations, because it would enable data to bypass national borders.

Related

Outer Banks finally dropped the trailer and premiere date for the final season.

And lowkey, the best part about it was a prison cell shot of the Pogues Redux that looks like they’re about to drop the most fire hip-hop album in ages.

Fitting, since we’re still pouring one out for JJ. I’m not still fuming sobbing about that, by the way. Nope.

It feels like the Pogues have hit their all-time low, and that’s saying something, given that all they’ve ever known since we’ve followed them has been the bottom.

Their rock bottom is never the bottom; there’s always a trapdoor, no escape route, and it’s endless as the ocean.

The Pogues could probably take on Lucifer himself in hell, and they still wouldn’t have hit their worst, no?

So we’re kicking off the final season under the bleakest of circumstances, with the Pogues essentially having no home to really go back to.

I’m pretty certain most of them are wanted for something or another; the entire town would have their heads on pikes when they get back.

The Blue Crown is gone, they’ve collected more enemies around the globe than Thanos did Infinity Stones, and we’re down one Pogue and up one hot psychopath.

The reality of what they face is already exhausting, and you can see it on everyone’s faces, never mind that they’re grieving the very heart of the Pogues.

But there’s no real time to grieve, and that’s one of many reasons why cutting a life short for shock value in the final moments of a penultimate season leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It means we’ll have an entire season of the Pogues too deep in the thick of it to ever get to properly grieve or process anything. They’re running on adrenaline-and they force us to do the same.

There’s a claustrophobic quality in that, which is a bit narratively exhausting. We don’t actually get much time to mourn a poor orphan whose body their frenemy had to bury in the sands of a Moroccan desert.

It makes sense that we catch a glimpse of these children of the ocean, honoring their late friend at sea with a photo send-off à la Animal Kingdom.

And it’s still a kick in the teeth that someone with a lifestyle like JJ’s, who had the odds against him in a way that felt so visceral and real, ends so tragically.

And only the Pogues will remember and honor him.

But this sets up a final season of revenge. Frankly, from the teaser we got, it doesn’t really seem like most of them are even up for that. In many ways, I can’t blame them. They’ve had one hell of a stretch of non-stop action and life-threatening antics.

They rolled the dice on a Choose Your Own Adventure one good time, and it’s whooped their collective asses since then.

The final season has so much ground to cover, and much of it hinges on avenging JJ, which means we’ll likely have Kiara taking center stage on this endeavor, and even as someone who shipped the pairing, it feels like more than Kiara can chew.

Kiara leading the charge on trying to take down Groff doesn’t assure the emotional punch that it likely should. But that’s probably because, for something this grand, JJ would typically be leading the charge.

John B feels so weary and muted during the teaser, and it’s kind of difficult to get hype when it seems like even their ringleader is “over it” and for good reason, he’s an expectant father.

Although with all the explosions, running, arrests, jetsetting, and more, without proper showers, food, or just a damn moment, I can’t even process a pregnant Sarah staying that way.

The teaser attempts to give us all the things we know to be quintessentially Outer Banks — we have action, explosions, quick teases of familiar faces (was that Barry with a shotgun?).

Clearly, they’re trying to course correct Cleo’s random lack of badassery last season with that shot of her blowing up the Twinkie.

That’s the moment that strikes me the most, not because it’s devastating to see a staple like John B’s trusty Twinkie going up in flames, but because I thought I would feel something seeing that.

It signals the end of this series, this journey, and Pogue’s life as we know it.

But that’s quietly more depressing than all of last season, which found the Pogues feeling more distant than ever, rewrites of important dynamics, like the brotherhood between all the guys, and sidelining of characters.

It feels like a move designed to MAKE us feel something, spark a tug of nostalgia that the show itself stopped earning a while ago.

The teaser trailer gives us a taste of what’s supposed to be familiar about Outer Banks, but there’s a disconnect, and it all feels strangely hollow.

All flash, high production, and bang but no heart.

And if it already feels like the trailer alone is coasting on our desire to see it through and our love for what Outer Banks was, more than what it is now, then maybe that’s why I can’t shake the skepticism about what the final season will deliver.

Skepticism over whether the final season can even deliver.

I’m not feeling the final season hype right now as much as I am a completionist. P4L is feeling more like an obligation than a rallying call.

Right now, I’m not passing the vibe check, but after watching the trailer, I’m curious if you are!

Outer Banks’ fifth and final season will stream in its entirety on Netflix on August 20.

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The last thing you want to happen after dropping hundreds of dollars on a wearable is to discover that it doesn’t work with your body. But, that’s a fairly common problem people with wrist tattoos have been running into since the advent of smartwatches and fitness trackers. As countless posts on device support pages and Reddit have chronicled over the years, tattooed skin and the sensors used by wearables often don’t mix well.

One of the main issues people experience is with heart rate sensing. Wearables use a light-based technique called photoplethysmography (PPG) to measure heart rate. That’s the green light you see when you flip your device over. But, tattoos can get in the way of that light, messing with the readings. The other problem is wrist detection, which also uses lights to determine if the tracker is on a person’s wrist (along with an accelerometer and electrical sensors). Slap a fitness tracker on a wrist that’s covered by a tattoo, and the device may not register that it’s being worn at all, consequently requiring the wearer to repeatedly unlock the device whenever they want to interact with it.

It might seem a bit silly that technology advanced enough to respond to gesture controls and provide personalized sleep coaching would be stumped by a bit of pigment, but the tattoo issue isn’t just a baseless gripe that consumers have latched onto. Device makers have acknowledged it and advised buyers to avoid putting their trackers on top of tattoos.

“Tattoos (ink, pattern, saturation) can block the heart rate sensor’s light, causing inaccurate or missing readings,” Garmin notes on a support page. “For best performance, wear the watch on skin that is free of tattoos if possible.” Apple has issued similar notices going back to the release of the first Apple Watch.

Is there a solution?

People with tattoos have devised sorts of workarounds to get the most out of their smart watches and fitness trackers, though none are exactly ideal. The simplest? If the inside of your wrist isn’t tattooed (or at least has larger areas of clear skin), you can position the device there instead of on top of the wrist. Similarly, if your other wrist is tattoo-free, wear the device on that one. But if you’ve grown used to wearing a watch on a certain wrist for years, it’s going to feel pretty weird to change it up.

As a quick fix, some people swear by epoxy bottle cap stickers or layering pieces of clear tape, either of which are placed over the sensors and inexplicably correct the problem for a lot of wearers. Reusable accessories designed to work the same way have seen some success too. There’s also the option of using a chest strap if accurate heart rate tracking is all you’re after — and if you don’t have chest tattoos. Again, though, this isn’t the most comfortable or convenient way to use a wearable in most situations day-to-day. 

Ultimately, it’ll continue to be an issue until the sensors these watches and fitness trackers rely on are improved to account for skin variations like tattoo ink. Likewise, light-based sensors have been found to be less reliable for people with dark skin, highlighting a need for more diversity in the research and development of this type of technology.

Anecdotally, it seems like Google’s Pixel Watch 4 might be much better at handling tattooed skin than its predecessors. There were rumors of Samsung introducing an update a few years back to improve things in this area too, but the complaints of tattooed Galaxy Watch users would suggest otherwise.

More research is needed

Identifying the problem is theoretically the first step to solving it, but unhelpfully, the reality is that how much tattoos interfere with sensor readings isn’t consistent from case to case. A study published in 2025 attempted to quantify the difference in readings taken from devices worn over tattooed skin versus non-tattooed skin, and while it did find the former suffered inaccuracies, the results were mixed.

The researchers used the Polar Verity Sense and armband, outfitting participants with one device over a tattoo plus one on the same arm in an area without a tattoo. Participants also wore a Polar H10 chest strap heart rate monitor to establish a baseline, as this style of wearable is considered to be more accurate. Over the course of a day, they were monitored when at rest, walking at their own pace and jogging.

This revealed that the presence of the tattoos did have an impact on heart rate readings, but it was dependent on the wearer’s activity level, “with the greatest effect observed at rest and variation decreasing as exercise intensity increases.” And in some cases, the researchers note, “the presence of an arm tattoo did not affect the heart rate validity measurement at all.” There are a number of variables that must be taken into account — like ink color, saturation and depth — and as it stands today, there just hasn’t yet been enough research down to the nitty-gritty of the problem to bring about a solution.

Albert Hammond Jr. has shared an explanation for why the release of The Strokes’ new album ‘Reality Awaits’ has been delayed.

The New York indie icons have been preparing to release their seventh studio album, with its original date having been set for June 26. However, last week (June 11), the band announced that it had been pushed back to July 24, without providing their reasoning. Pre-order the record here.

Now, guitarist Hammond has shed some light on the decision. In a since-deleted response to a fan on X, he explained that they decided to shift it four weeks later because they wanted the streaming release date to match that of the vinyl release. In his comments, he also said he thinks the music on the album sounds like that made by a “weird, young band”.

Hammond has also released a new track with the indie rock artist KennyHoopla, titled ‘NEW AMERICA//’, a stomping, ‘00s dance punk-influenced track. Listen here:

Hammond’s comments on the new music echo what he said last month, when he referred to ‘Reality Awaits’ as his “favourite album” that The Strokes have ever made. “I can’t express how beautiful it is,” he said. “I listen to the whole thing and wanna start from the beginning again. It grows and grows and becomes intoxicatingly good.”

Those words followed some pushback from Strokes fans to the early singles ‘Going Shopping’ and ‘Falling Out Of Love’, with some complaining about Julian Casablancas’ use of vocoder .

NME gave ‘Going Shopping’ a three-star review and described it as a song that “doesn’t feel bold” but also “does avoid playing anything safe.”

“You couldn’t definitively place its sound on any of The Strokes’ previous six albums, but the lack of spirit and tenacity – save for a guitar solo at the end – is noticeable,” the review read. “‘If you’re better than me you don’t have to judge me’, signs off Casablancas, with an imaginary raised eyebrow. But perhaps even he would admit that The Strokes are better than this.”

The Strokes have already played at Coachella and Bonnaroo, and have a huge tour to come that takes in the UK, North America, Europe and Japan. It will be their first full run of headline dates in the UK and Ireland in over 20 years, and it includes stops at London’s O2. Support will come from Thundercat, Cage the Elephant, Hamilton Leithauser, Fat White Family, Alex Cameron and ÖLÜM, and more dates have been added due to huge demand.

They have also announced a huge New York show with Beach House, TV On The Radio and Fcukers at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on October 2. Find any remaining tickets here.

All of these shows will see The Strokes perform without guitarist Nick Valensi, as the band confirmed recently that he would be taking a “temporary break” from playing live.

FKA twigs is celebrating the end of her Body High Tour with a new single. “On Your Mind” is a thumping electro track featuring Lil Yachty; you can listen to it below. It’s twigs’ first new solo material since 2025’s Euxsexua Afterglow, a reimagined version of her LP Eusexua.

In a post to Instagram, twigs revealed the story behind “On Your Mind,” which was written after she discovered members of her team would not be able to travel with her to last year’s Coachella, leading to that set’s cancellation.

“i stayed late in the dance studio manically practicing in the hopes that the news was not true, and in denial that somehow i would still make it across the sea to perform for my amazing and loyal fans if i just practiced a bit more,” she writes. “it never ceases to amaze me how pain can manifest into the hardest and most euphoric sonics. i think making songs like this keeps me on my toes and reminds me that i am not in control.

“i am giving this back story because after completing my first arena tour of the USA and EU it feels like the perfect time to release it in celebration of what as artists we can overcome when we believe in ourselves and others believe in us. i feel so full, thank you for coming to see BODY HIGH, thank you for continuing to grow with me. thank you for what we are building next. everything happens for a reason and my reason for making music and art will always be you xxx”

FKA twigs has had a busy 2026 overall. In addition to the new track and tour, she wrote music for Anne Hathaway vehicle Mother Mary, was revealed to be playing Josephine Baker in a future biopic, and sued the band Twigs over trademark infringement.

Revisit our Best New Album review of Eusexua.

WASHINGTON — Private equity firm EQT is acquiring Exolaunch, a company that has handled the rideshare launches of hundreds of satellites, to help it meet growing launch demand.

The companies announced June 18 that EQT would buy Exolaunch from its founder, Dmitriy Sternharz, for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Berlin-based Exolaunch is best known for arranging launches of satellites as rideshare payloads. That has included more than 790 satellites on 47 missions, including every Transporter and Bandwagon dedicated rideshare launch by SpaceX. Exolaunch has also developed a series of satellite deployment systems.

“EQT is excited to partner with Exolaunch, which marks EQT Private Equity’s first investment in the space sector,” Nils Ketter, partner and head of industrial technology at EQT Private Equity, said in a statement. “We look forward to supporting Exolaunch’s management as it works with customers and partners to expand access to space.”

Robert Sproles, chief executive of Exolaunch, said in an interview that the company decided to sell to get the resources it needed to meet growing demand from customers seeking launch services.

“We realized that we have some scaling plans that we want to implement, but we need some firepower behind that,” he said. “This was an opportunity to take that next step, to enter the next phase of the company where we have the backing of EQT to help us grow and scale at the speed and the pace that the industry is demanding.”

He said EQT was “philosophically aligned” with Exolaunch, making it the preferred choice over alternatives such as raising funding from venture capital firms. He added there are no planned changes to the management team or staff of Exolaunch.

With EQT’s backing, Exolaunch will look to acquire additional launch capacity. “We are in such a launch-constrained moment in the industry. The demand for launch is outstripping access to orbit,” he said.

A big factor in that demand is the rise of smallsat constellations that are not large enough for dedicated launches but are larger than what current rideshare capacity can handle. “As soon as you start introducing even one or two players that need consistently 24 or 36 vehicles on a launch, you overwhelm that rideshare capacity instantly,” he said.

Exolaunch has already taken steps along those lines, announcing May 26 that it had acquired two Falcon 9 launches it will use for its own dedicated rideshare missions in 2027 and 2028. Sproles said the company was talking with other launch providers about similar missions.

“You will see a continued shift from Exolaunch where we are not a passive participant in other people’s manifests or passively seeing what the market can provide, but instead we are actively pulling this capacity from different providers,” he said. “It really will be about how we can create capacity that our customers need to get them to space in the timeframes that are useful to them.”

That shift comes amid industry concerns about the long-term future of SpaceX’s rideshare program. At last month’s SmallSat Europe conference, industry officials speculated that SpaceX could either shift from Falcon 9 to Starship for rideshare missions or end rideshare missions entirely in the next few years.

“SpaceX has been very transparent about its desire for Starship to be the future of the company,” Sproles said, but added that even if SpaceX continued its current Falcon 9 rideshare programs, it would not be sufficient to meet demand. “For any scenario that we play out here, we have the need for other vehicles and other options for new customers. So, that’s exactly what we’re building.”

“One of the things that I tell launch providers every time I meet with them is that every kilogram of upmass you can make available will be sold,” he added. “It will be many years before this demand is saturated, so every vehicle you can bring to market, every way that you can increase your cadence, that will be sold.”

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The television industry has been in a weird state of flux over the last few years, thanks to media companies tightening their budgets and not giving shows a chance to breathe.

When Netflix swung the axe on The Boroughs this week, I couldn’t shake it for a couple of reasons.

The biggest is that the cancellation came just over three weeks after its May 21 premiere.

The streaming platform has taken a lot of heat in recent months after a wave of high-profile shows were confirmed to be ending with their next seasons.

Emily in Paris, The Lincoln Lawyer, and The Night Agent are the most notable examples, with all three already renewed for final seasons.

They’ve all had years to build up audiences, but with their most recent seasons dropping double digits, it’s no surprise Netflix is giving them one last run to wrap things up.

Now that Sweet Magnolias Season 5 has premiered, all eyes are on it to see whether it becomes the next long-running show to get the pink slip.

But those longer-running shows are at least getting a chance to say goodbye. The same cannot be said of newer offerings like The Boroughs.

The series was decent and very watchable, but it felt slightly out of place premiering in May.

The Boroughs Premiered Far Too Early in the Year

It probably would have had a better shot in October, leaning into the Halloween window.

Netflix has this never-ending well of content, so I don’t believe for one minute they couldn’t have shifted the release a few weeks and given it a different runway.

A bigger issue with Netflix’s promotion in particular is that it can sometimes feel non-existent.

Shows just appear out of thin air and are expected to perform.

To their credit, the promotion for The Boroughs was actually fairly solid, but it’s still hard to believe Netflix truly gave it a fighting chance if the decision was going to be made after such a short window.

The trend may not have been on The Boroughs’ side, but the idea that dumping an entire season and canceling a show within weeks is a meaningful test of performance feels increasingly questionable.

The only real silver lining is that The Boroughs told a relatively self-contained story, but it still feels like it could have grown into something much bigger had it been given the opportunity.

Given the current trajectory of Netflix‘s scripted originals, it would make far more sense to experiment with weekly rollouts again.

Their thinking with The Boroughs must have been that not enough people checked it out quickly enough, so it just came and went.

Had it actually been released weekly, it would have had a chance to build momentum over time.

I don’t see how this model holds up in the long term if binge drops remain the default.

Surely Netflix executives are weighing this up now that every show is effectively on a stopwatch.

Ransom Canyon Season 2 is coming up, and given that the first season didn’t generate much buzz, I suspect it won’t be long before it’s on shaky ground too.

At this point, it feels less like shows are being evaluated on potential and more like they’re being judged on whether they catch fire instantly.

What are your thoughts on The Boroughs getting canceled after just three weeks?

Do you think it was warranted, or are you side-eyeing the decisions to come from Netflix?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.

Long-lost film footage of The Beatles playing on the BBC’s Top Of The Pops has reportedly been found and will be restored.

The band appeared on the iconic show on 19 March 1964 to record performances of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘You Can’t Do That’, the A-side and B-side of a single released the following day which went on to become their fourth UK Number One.

Like many early episodes of Top Of The Pops, however, the footage was not preserved by the BBC and it has not been seen for decades.

Now, the film preservation group Film Is Fabulous have said that they were presented with a 35mm BBC negative of the performance at the recent British Film Collectors’ Convention in Surrey.

They claim the family of a deceased former industry professional passed the precious film to them, and they will work to restore the footage and return it to the BBC Archives. “Discussions will also be held with other parts of the corporation to ensure the content is made available to a wide audience,” Film Is Fabulous wrote on Facebook.

The Beatles on ToTPs

Film is Fabulous! is delighted to confirm the 35mm negative presented to John Franklin at the recent film convention in Oxted, contains the The Beatles first appearance on Top of the Tops. pic.twitter.com/hPvOjqPR8u

— filmisfabulous (@filmisfabulous) June 18, 2026

Describing the footage, the group said: “Recorded on the 19th March 1964, at the BBC’s Television Theatre (since renamed The Shepherd’s Bush Empire), in London, the inserts beautifully captured the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania.”

“Passages of the recording show the studio, the technicians, and the make-up ladies. There were four takes of the first song, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, with two being aborted because of technical errors. During breaks, the Beatles openly joked, and could be seen dancing to amuse themselves.”

They added: “The other song, ‘You Can’t Do That’, had two takes. During the second of these recordings John Lennon pulled a funny face when the camera came in for a ‘close-up’. It’s an amusing piece of Beatle history.”

The BBC routinely wiped and reused tapes during the 1960s, resulting in the loss of countless episodes of many of their most popular shows, including Top Of The Pops. If successfully restored, this would be the oldest surviving footage of the Fab Four on the show.

In other Beatles news, June 25 is set to be Global Beatles Day, commemorating the day in 1967 when the four band members recorded the international satellite TV broadcast of ‘All You Need Is Love’.

The Beatles and Apple Corps Ltd will be launching online and in-person events around the world to celebrate the band, while a colourised version of the broadcast will also be released for the first time.

The Fab Four are also going to be the subject of a four-film series by Sam Mendes, slated for a simultaneous release in April 2028. Set to star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, each film will tell the story of the band from a different member’s point of view.

McCartney dropped his new album ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane‘ last month, which featured his first ever duet with Starr on ‘Home To Us’. McCartney sat down with NME to look forwards and back on his extraordinary career, share his “excitement” at contributing to the new The Rolling Stones album, and also reveal if he has plans to retire.

In recent months, he had worked on albums from Key Glock, Megan Thee Stallion, Offset, and Westside Gunn, among others. In recent months, he had worked on albums from Key Glock, Megan Thee Stallion, Offset, and Westside Gunn, among others. in South Memphis, Chambers grew up listening to local rap royalty like Three 6 Mafia, Playa Fly, and 8Ball & MJG with his family. “I always knew music was gonna be my outlet,” he told the Fader in 2018. “I just didn’t know when, or how it was gonna happen.” That answer arrived in his early teens, when Chambers first began recording music—equipped with just a mic, his computer, and a piano—and releasing it on DatPiff and YouTube. It was also around this time that he met the rapper BlocBoy JB, who would go on to become one of his closest collaborators.

After people began offering to pay for the beats he uploaded online, Chambers went all in on producing, and eventually counted Drumma Boy and Memphis Track Boy as early mentors. Although his earliest credits date back to 2012, he broke out properly in 2015 after producing Black Youngsta’s mixtape Fuck Everybody. He released his debut solo mixtape, Foolhardy, in 2018, and his sole studio album, Fxck the Cash Up with Fast Cash Boyz, in 2020. In more recent years, he had worked on albums from Key Glock, Megan Thee Stallion, Offset, and Westside Gunn, among others.

Chambers worked consistently with some of the most recognizable names in mainstream rap, but he never shied from investing in rising, left-of-center talent. “Pound Town,” his 2023 track with Sexyy Red, became her breakout single and foregrounded one of the strongest mixtapes of the year, Hood’s Hottest Princess. But as Chambers explained to Billboard in 2024, most people treated the uproarious track as a joke when it first came out. “People were trolling the shit out of me,” he said. “It wasn’t much good feedback. It was coming from even people around me, ‘What you doing?’ I saw the potential. That’s as simple as it was, me believing in her.”

Since news broke of Chambers’ passing, multiple other musicians have shared public tributes to his life and legacy. “Damn Cuz You Just Hurt Me Bad” BlocBoy JB said in an Instagram story, alongside a photo of the pair. “We talked everyday.” Fellow Memphis producer Hitkidd also expressed disbelief on Instagram, writing: “I ain’t even got the words, we been doing this since 2010.”

PITTSBURGH — Astrobotic showed off the lunar lander it plans to launch later this year that will be the vanguard of NASA’s new lunar base ambitions.

At a June 15 event at its headquarters, the company revealed its Griffin-1 lander. The company is completing final work on the lander before shipping it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for environmental tests in the next few weeks.

After those tests are complete, Griffin will return to Astrobotic for final integration work before shipping to Florida for launch preparations. The lander is projected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Griffin will deliver 10 payloads from six nations to the moon, led by the FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) robotic rover from Astrolab. The 500-kilogram rover will be the heaviest commercial payload landed on the moon to date.

“This is the first infrastructure-class lander going to the surface of the moon,” said John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, at a press conference, citing its ability in the future to deliver power systems and other equipment. “This lander will be part of the cornerstone of building up the moon base.”

Griffin-1 is Astrobotic’s second lunar lander mission. The company’s first mission, Peregrine, launched in January 2024 but suffered a propulsion malfunction hours after launch that prevented it from attempting a lunar landing.

“We learned a lot” from Peregrine, Thornton said. The company was able to operate the lander in cislunar space for a week and a half and determined that nothing beyond the failed valve would have prevented it from attempting a landing.

“The Griffin lander behind me has integrated all of those lessons learned,” he said. “This lander has a dual, redundant valve system with two dissimilar valves that both have to fail to have the same outcome. That will not happen. We are done with valve issues on our landers.”

“Programmatically, it is fundamentally different than how we operated with Peregrine,” Thornton said in a later interview. “Peregrine was designed to be the lowest-cost mission that could fly as fast as it could. With Griffin, it was always designed from the outset to fly a very complex science mission from NASA.”

“We’ve done way more testing on this vehicle than we did with Peregrine, and also incorporated all the lessons learned from Peregrine,” he said. “It’s as robust as we know how to do it.”

The company is similarly confident in its ability to land safely. Griffin uses an autonomous landing system that includes terrain relative navigation, where an onboard computer compares images of the surface from the lander’s cameras with a map to determine its position: “Neil Armstrong in a box,” said Andrew Horchler, chief research scientist at Astrobotic, in an interview.

That will be supplemented with a navigation Doppler lidar when the lander is a few kilometers above the surface, and then a hazard-detection lidar just above the surface that can detect obstacles as small as 15 centimeters across. That will determine the best landing location, feeding that information to the guidance computer to perform a divert maneuver to reach that site.

“What we’re doing right now, and have been doing, is going through that entire verification and validation process of our systems,” he said. That has included flight tests involving helicopters, aircraft and rocket-powered vehicles, as well as hardware-in-the-loop tests and thousands of software simulations.

Fitting into NASA’s Moon Base

Astrobotic developed Griffin-1 under a 2020 task order issued by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The task order covered the delivery of NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, then planned for late 2023.

However, NASA announced in July 2024 that it was canceling VIPER but would retain the CLPS task order for the Griffin-1 mission. NASA later changed course and decided to revive VIPER, electing to fly it instead on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander.

At a May 26 event, NASA announced that the Griffin-1 lander would be known as “Moon Base 2,” part of a renaming of three lander missions already under development under CLPS task orders. While named Moon Base 2, it is now likely the first to fly, given likely delays to the first Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, named Moon Base 1, after the pad explosion of a New Glenn rocket on May 28.

The name change is intended to be more than cosmetic. “We’re using CLPS as the vehicle, but we want to approach it a little bit different way. The contracts haven’t changed, but our focus and attention has,” said Carlos García-Galán, NASA program executive for Moon Base, in an interview.

That includes an increased focus on the reliability of landings. Of the four CLPS missions flown to date, only one — Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 — landed safely and completed its full mission. Besides Peregrine’s in-flight anomaly, Intuitive Machines’ two lunar landers toppled upon landing, limiting their missions.

“We’re basically working to put the entire NASA might behind these companies that are developing landers,” he said, including access to NASA subject matter experts and testing facilities. “We’re talking about the people who are best at landing things on other planets.”

For Astrobotic, that has included providing more NASA experts to help the company. “If there’s another need for testing and such, we’re definitely going to help them with that,” he added.

NASA only has a few small payloads on this mission, but García-Galán said the agency wants to use it to learn more about the south polar region where Griffin-1 will be landing. “We really need to get ground truth on different areas of the south pole,” including terrain and temperature conditions.

“We have meter-scale knowledge of those areas where we need centimeters, so getting that ground truth on the environment is number one,” he said. A second priority will be gaining insights into the deployment and movement of Astrolab’s FLIP rover.

“In the first few landings, like this mission, the payload is less relevant than the act of getting there and trying things,” he said.

Thornton said Astrobotic welcomed the additional NASA support. “I think that’s fantastic,” he said. “That has been a good recipe for success for Astrobotic for a long time,” going back to a NASA program called Lunar Catalyst that predated CLPS, providing technical support for lunar lander developers through unfunded agreements.

“The more that we can do that, the better,” he said of NASA collaboration. “Scaling Peregrine up to Griffin was more difficult than we realized.”

Astrobotic does not have any CLPS awards after Griffin-1, but Thornton said he hopes to fill the space that lander will vacate in the company’s clean room soon. He said the company is bidding on a CLPS task order called CS-8 that was announced at the same Ignition event where NASA disclosed its lunar base plans. “We hope to hear news about that soon,” he said.

The higher cadence of landing missions, he added, will provide additional opportunities along with the company’s work on lunar power systems. “What’s really exciting about Moon Base is the cadence of landings is going to pick up dramatically, which means the cadence of opportunities is going to pick up.”

Related

Critic’s Rating: 3.25 / 5.0

3.25

I’m going to be honest, I went into House of the Dragon Season 3 expecting it to be a mess.

After the relatively strong House of the Dragon Season 1, the series spun its wheels for the majority of House of the Dragon Season 2, which was ultimately cut short by two episodes.

House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 8 was a terrible finale because it was really just the setup for what were supposed to be the final two episodes of the season.

As a result, opening House of the Dragon Season 3 with those episodes 22 months later was never going to do the show any favors.

By the time they finally arrived, much of the momentum had evaporated, making it difficult to invest in developments that felt long overdue.

Many big things are happening that will shape the rest of the series, but the biggest talking point is the even greater deviations from the source material, which will undoubtedly rile the fanbase.

My biggest issue with these changes is that they don’t enhance the story in any way, shape, or form.

Look, House of the Dragon Season 1 was very good with its changes because they felt necessary, but everything since has felt like change for change’s sake.

When you have George R.R. Martin, the person who created the franchise, saying that House of the Dragon is no longer his story, it’s clear the show is heading into uncharted territory.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Hits Its Stride

Despite a lot happening in the first two episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3, they struggle to live up to the hype because of where they fall in the story.

HBO shared the first four episodes with critics in advance of the premiere, and if those were the only episodes I’d received, I probably wouldn’t have watched the rest of the season.

Thankfully, we get our first real taste of what House of the Dragon Season 3 is trying to be in Episodes 3 and 4, and truth be told, they’re a remarkable improvement and probably the best episodes since House of the Dragon Season 1.

The plot is much more focused, and these episodes feel less like setup and more like the level of intensity we should have gotten from the jump in this Targaryen civil war.

As has become the norm with the series, Emma D’Arcy is the standout star as Rhaenyra.

We’ve watched Rhaenyra’s journey since her younger days, when her right to the Iron Throne was stripped away, and she was forced to navigate a contentious relationship with Alicent, her one-time best friend and later stepmother.

Rhaenyra is undoubtedly propelled by the hardship she’s endured in her quest for vengeance and to secure what she believes is rightfully hers.

The good news is that after spending so much time apart during the sophomore season, Rhaenyra and Daemon share far more screen time on House of the Dragon Season 3, allowing for a more nuanced and compelling dynamic between them.

Of course, Daemon hasn’t always had Rhaenyra’s best interests at heart. Still, his admission on the House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 8 that she was his queen certainly strengthened their relationship.

Another fantastic acting showcase comes courtesy of Olivia Cooke as Alicent struggles to come to terms with her agreement with Rhaenyra to hand over King’s Landing.

You can see the weight of that decision bearing down on Alicent in the early episodes, and it develops into an intriguing storyline with the potential to carry a lot of drama throughout the season.

Despite my issues with the first two episodes of the season, a lot does happen. House of the Dragon finally stages the Battle of the Gullet — one of the biggest events in Westeros history.

Even when House of the Dragon has faltered in the past, it has always been buoyed by its visual scale, which consistently towers above most other television.

The battle doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to brutality. If you’re here for dragons and humans at war, it’s a full-on spectacle, regardless of how you feel about the wider story.

Even when House of the Dragon stumbles, it rarely looks anything less than spectacular — but the real test this season is whether it can finally match that scale with consistent storytelling.

Over to you, House of the Dragon Fanatics! Will you check out the new season, or do you still feel burned by how the show has been handled so far?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.

But will it see the same success as the MacBook Neo?

Eels have today shared details of a new album, ‘Cookie Happened’, while giving fans a taster of what it sounds like via the emotive new track, ‘Cap In Hand’ – listen to it below.

The album will be the band’s 16th and will arrive on October 16 via E Works/Play It Again Sam. You can pre-order the album here.

Alongside the album announcement, the band also shared a new single, ‘Cap In Hand’, which you can listen to below.

The track is described as a “bittersweet and beautifully bruised first take of the album” that is “told from the perspective of someone finally confronting their mistakes and is now attempting to set things right.”

You can listen to the new track here:

The statement added: “The warm-hearted, rueful and quietly triumphant song, sets the tone for an album that finds E (Mark Oliver Everett) turning his gaze toward life’s small victories, inevitable disappointments and the strange miracle of having been here at all.”

Speaking about the album title, E said: “All of this will be forgotten. Every joy, accomplishment and hardship will one day become so irrelevant it will be as if none of it occurred.

“But as the great philosopher of our times, Cookie Monster once said: ‘Me no cry because cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened.’ This will all be forgotten. But isn’t it still a beautiful thing that it happened?”

Speaking about the new track, E added: “I wanted to sound kind of worn out for this one too, like someone who’s messed up their life but now sees the error of their ways and is trying to make amends with their tail between their legs.

“You know how record companies are: ‘We don’t care what you give us, just make sure you sound defeated on the first two tracks!’”

‘Cookie Happened Tracklist:
1. ‘Clobbered’
2. ‘Cap In Hand’
3. ‘All Forgotten’
4. ‘Bamboozled Again’
5. ‘Lost And Barking’
6. Taking Pictures’
7. ‘New Story’
8. ‘Congratulations To Me’
9. ‘One Razzle, One Dazzle’
10. ‘I’m On Standby’
11. ‘Dum Dums’
12. ‘The Way I Was Made’

Back in March, it was announced that Judd Apatow is producing a documentary about Eels frontman Everett.

The pair have worked together before, when E acted in Apatow’s 2016 TV series Love, and now the filmmaker is putting together about the musician’s fascinating life.

Titled The Way I Was Made: The Story Of A Man Called E, the film is directed by Gus Black, who has also made music videos for Eels.

The official synopsis reads: “The Way I Was Made is an intimate and emotionally powerful portrait of an artist’s unwavering pursuit of creative integrity in the face of profound personal tragedy. As a teenager, Everett discovered his brilliant but troubled father dead. Years later, just as his dreams of becoming a musician began to take shape, he lost both his sister and his mother in devastating succession.

“Confronted with unimaginable grief, Everett chose not the pursuit of fame, but a deeply personal artistic path — transforming loss into one of the most heart-achingly beautiful and critically acclaimed catalogues in modern music.”

Apatow said in a statement (via Stereogum): “I’ve always thought E’s story would make for a fantastic documentary. I am confused by why it has taken this long.”

E’s 2007 autobiography, Things The Grandchildren Should Know, received critical acclaim for its unique narrative framing, where the author takes on the persona of an elderly man sharing wisdom he has learned before he dies. The Who legend Pete Townshend described it as “One of the best books ever written by a contemporary artist.”

Ella Williams’ is back with her latest Squirrel Flower record. Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going includes contributions from Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, the War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley, Free Range’s Sofia Jensen, Twin Peaks’ Clay Frankel, and more. It arrives August 21 on Polyvinyl. Check out the video for lead track “Reelin” below, along with a full slate of fall tour stops (including supporting dates with the Beths, Spoon, and Ethel Cain).

“The lyrics started as an art piece I made on an overdue Kansas Turnpike toll bill,” Williams said in a statement about the new single. “This song is my ode to the push and pull of domesticity and unraveling. Leaving and getting reeled back in, over and over and over and over.”

Revisit our review of 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire.

Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going:
01 Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going
02 Cleveland
03 Not Me
04 Helicopters
05 Highway Woman
06 Reelin
07 Foot Thick Ice
08 Sick Tooth
09 Fought a Hornet
10 Surfing USA
11 Weightless, Untethered

Squirrel Flower 2026 Tour Dates:
06-16 Charlotte, NC – The Underground #
06-17 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle #
06-18 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle #
06-21 New Haven, CT – College St Music Hall $
06-23 Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore $
06-24 Baltimore, MD – Nevermore Music Hall $
06-26 Detroit, MI – The Fillmore $
06-27 Cleveland, OH – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame $
06-28 Columbus, OH – KEMBA Live! $
06-30 Newport, KY – MegaCorp Pavilion $
07-01 Louisville, KY – Iroquois Amphitheater $
08-02 Chicago, IL – Metro ! [SOLD OUT]
09-23 Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop =
09-24 Toronto, ON – Second Summer Festival
09-25 Montreal, QC – La Sotterenea (POP Montreal Festival)
09-26 Boston, MA – Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre =
09-27 Northampton, MA – Iron Horse =
09-29 Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere – Rooftop*
09-30 Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s*
10-01 Washington, DC – Union Stage*
10-02 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall*
10-03 Durham, NC – Stanczyks*
10-06 Asheville, NC – Revival*
10-07 Atlanta, GA – The Earl*
10-08 Nashville, TN – Third Man Records – Blue Room*
10-10 Indianapolis, IN – The Turntable*
10-23 St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway +
10-24 Lawrence, KS – White Schoolhouse +
10-25 Fayetteville, AR – George’s Majestic Lounge +
10-27 Dallas, TX – Ruins +
10-28 San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger +
10-29 Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall Upstairs +
10-30 Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom +
11-01 Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar +
11-03 Los Angeles, CA – Sid the Cat Auditorium +
11-04 – Ojai, CA – Ojai Deer Lodge +
11-05 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel +
11-07 Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern +
11-08 Vancouver, BC – Wise Hall +
11-09 Olympia, WA – Wild Child +
11-11 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater +
11-12 Boise, ID – Neurolux +
11-13 Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge +
11-15 Denver, CO – Globe Hall +
11-17 Omaha, NE – Reverb +
11-18 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Cafe +
11-19 Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club +
11-20 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall +

# supporting The Beths
$ supporting Spoon + The Beths
! supporting Ethel Cain
= w/ youbet
* w/ Dari Bay
+ w/ Sour Widows

TAMPA, Fla. — Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks plans to expand its defense capabilities by acquiring most of Comtech’s space-related communications business, six years after the U.S. company’s own takeover bid collapsed.

Gilat said June 15 it had agreed to buy Comtech’s satellite ground infrastructure solutions, troposcatter systems that connect users beyond line of sight, engineering and other space communications equipment assets for $157.5 million in cash.

It is Gilat’s second-largest acquisition in the past two years, noted William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, after snapping up aircraft antenna specialist StellarBlu for $245 million in January 2025.

In January 2020, Comtech announced plans to buy Gilat for $533 million, but the deal was later derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comtech had to fend off a $790 million takeover attempt from investment firm Acacia Research Corp in 2022 after revenue declined following the failed merger, which also forced it to pay Gilat a $70 million breakup fee.

According to Gilat, the business it is acquiring generated $195.2 million for the 12 months ended Jan. 31, nearly 4% higher than the $187.8 million recorded for Comtech’s fiscal year ended July 31, 2025.

The assets include anti-jam tactical modems for the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, satellite ground systems, space electronics and high-powered amplifiers. The deal mainly excludes Comtech’s cyber-focused assets.

The Israeli firm said the acquisition would help grow annual revenue to more than $700 million, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) projected to reach $80 million.

“A merger of the two entities made strategic sense six years ago and that remains true today,” DiPalma said, adding the acquisition would increase Gilat’s defense business from around 25% of total revenue to roughly 40%.

In a statement, Gilat CEO Adi Sfadia said the deal follows several years of effort to expand the company’s defense capabilities and presence.

“The addition of Comtech’s Satellite & Space Communication segment significantly accelerates this strategy by increasing our scale, strengthening our U.S. presence, and expanding our ability to address larger and more complex defense and space programs,” he said.

“We are committed to continuing to invest in these technologies, supporting existing customers and building upon Comtech’s decades-long heritage serving mission-critical programs.” 

The companies expect to close the transaction before the end of the year, pending clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and other regulatory bodies.

The sale would leave Comtech focused on a public safety technology business that emergency services use to handle calls, locate people and coordinate responses.

Related

When Torres first joined NCIS at the beginning of Season 14, he felt like a stand-in for DiNozzo.

There were many of the same mannerisms and personality traits, which could have helped us settle into the character.

After spending years undercover, Torres liked to keep to himself, and he carried a lot of personal heartache.

Over time, he has developed some friendships, but there was a moment from NCIS Season 23 that made it clear he hasn’t really grown all that much.

Torres Was Way Too Hurt About Kasie Keeping Part of Her Life Silent

During NCIS Season 23 Episode 18, everyone learned that Kasie’s creation, Edna, was worth millions. 

She was even in the process of selling it to some big company.

Now, I stand by my thoughts that Parker and McGee should have never said anything to the others about the windfall that Kasie was about to receive. That was her news to share.

It was clear from Torres’ reaction that she made the right choice in staying silent. 

Torres immediately complained that he’d just paid for dinner with Kasie.

Why should that matter when she hadn’t come into the money in the first place? The discussion about Edna was still going through the negotiation process.

It immediately left a bad taste in my mouth, showing how immature and egotistical Torres still is.

That got me thinking about how little he’s changed over the last ten seasons.

While he’s had relationships and opened up more, his development has been short-lived, as he regresses to his previous self.

I think part of that stems from the way Bishop left at the end of NCIS Season 18, but we didn’t really get a full sense of that until her return this past season.

Torres and Bishop’s relationship was off-screen. There were always hints that they liked each other, but it was only after Bishop left that Torres showed how much he knew about her.

Bishop’s return in NCIS Season 23 Episode 10 brought much-needed flashbacks that highlighted just how important she was to him.

Add on the fact that Gibbs left shortly after Bishop, and there are plenty of reasons for Torres to revert to older personality traits, but it’s time for him to grow up.

Torres Deserves to Become a Better Person

There have been moments that have shown Torres is capable of change, and, surprisingly, these are in the bigger ways.

He tried to lean into his lonewolf ways at the start of NCIS Season 21 to get revenge, but in the end, he decided his career and current life were worth more.

He’s fought alcoholism, and there was a brief reminder of that as the team said goodbye to Vance shortly after the 500th episode.

These major moments can’t be backtracked, as they are Torres realizing his need to change. He’s made the decisions himself.

When it comes to the smaller elements of his personality, he doesn’t think there is a need to change just yet. Unfortunately, it’s these moments that get tiresome.

While I think someone should have called him out for going on about the dinner with Kasie, it wasn’t up to them to realize that Torres was fixating on the wrong thing.

Showing that he changed could have been as simple as realizing he was fixating on the wrong thing.

This isn’t to say that he can’t have flaws. Every human does. It’s just to say that he needs to grow up.

There are even elements of his character that should stick around, such as his love for fun and games, his habit of betting against his teammates over trivial matters, and his decision to make Sawyer his archenemy.

These moments help secure his place on the team, and they show just how far he’s come in shedding the lone-wolf mentality.

But NCIS needs to stop using his immature moments as comedic relief, especially when they’re not all that necessary.

TV Fanatic runs on caffeine, cats, and your support.

Comment if you’re still watching. Share if you want others to know this show even exists. Hell, disagree with us all you want about the Torres topic! We appreciate you either way — truly.

Xbox is preparing to shut down or sell at least three of its studios — Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games — according to reports from The Verge and Bloomberg on Monday. 

Ninja Theory employees were informed on Monday that the studio would be closing, according to The Verge, but the team is attempting to find a buyer that can keep them operational. Ninja Theory is the studio behind the Hellblade series and it was featured in the recent Xbox Summer Game Fest showcase, revealing a new entry due in 2027.

Double Fine is the legendary studio behind the Psychonauts games, Brütal Legend, Broken Age, Keeper and all manner of LucasArts adventures, founded by Tim Schafer and friends in 2000. Double Fine leaders are in active negotiations to buy themselves back from Xbox rather than be closed altogether, Bloomberg said. 

Compulsion Games is in a similar position, according to the report. Compulsion is the Montreal studio behind the uber-stylish games Contrast, We Happy Few and South of Midnight, the latter of which came out in April 2025.

Bloomberg reported that several other studios under the Xbox Game Studios banner are also negotiating for their futures and are at risk of being shut down. As it officially stands, the Xbox Game Studios umbrella covers dozens of studios, including Arkane, Bethesda, Halo Studios, id Software, Obsidian, Playground Games, ZeniMax and Activision Blizzard King. We have contacted Xbox for clarification on the reported closures and buyout talks.

Microsoft’s modern game-studio acquiring spree kicked off in 2018 with the purchase of Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games, plus the formation of The Initiative. This momentum continued building at a concerning pace in 2020 and 2021, when Xbox acquired eight more studios under ZeniMax Media, including Arkane, Bethesda and id. Everything came to a head in 2022 with the announcement that Xbox planned to purchase Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, the largest acquisition in video game history. That deal finally went through at the end of 2023, after a lengthy battle with regulators.

Since the acquisitions, Microsoft has enacted multiple massive rounds of layoffs affecting thousands of employees in its gaming division, and also shuttered well-known studios, including The Initiative. Unfortunately, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Compulsion and the other at-risk Xbox studios are in good company.

Longtime Xbox division head Phil Spencer stepped down this year and was replaced by new CEO Asha Sharma, alongside other executive-level changes. Also on Monday, Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan left the company; he first took the role in October 2024. Employees across Xbox are bracing for more layoffs in 2026 after an ominous public memo from Sharma dropped in mid-June, just as the glow of Summer Game Fest fully faded.

Tom Morello used his set at Download Festival 2026 to send a message to the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

The Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave guitarist played on the Opus Stage at the Donington Park festival this weekend (June 14), and took the chance while playing for a big UK crowd to share his feelings about Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Morello played a set of provocative, politically-fuelled songs, including ‘Killing In The Name’ and ‘Soldier In The Army Of Love’, as well as Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Mr. Crowley’ and John Lennon’s ‘Power To The People’.

For the show, he had written in large letters on the back of the body of his guitar, “FUCK TOMMY ROBINSON”, with the big screens picking up the message. Morello later reposted a photo of the image on his X account – see below.

RATM guitarist Tom Morello’s message at Download Festival this weekend. pic.twitter.com/5oMTg9936K

— Antifa_Ultras (@ultras_antifaa) June 14, 2026

Morello is no stranger to picking fights with right wing British leaders – in 2018, Rage Against The Machine hit out at Nigel Farage, branding him a “pissweasel” for co-opting their name for his podcast ‘Farage Against The Machine’.

“This pissweasel IS the machine – peddling the sort of inane, blame-heavy bullshit that the guys in RATM have been raging against since day one,” the band said.

Later that year, Morello said: “I am open to accidentally giving Nigel a dry slap, if I encounter him on the tube. Though I doubt he rides the tube for fear of all the dry slaps he would receive.”

At a show supporting Muse in 2019, Morello continued his vendetta against Farage, and presaged his Robinson attack, by taping a sign to the back of his guitar that read “FUCK FARAGE”.

Morello is curating the Power To The People festival in October in Maryland, with Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Joan Baez and System of a Down’s Serj Tankian all set to perform. It is described as “a non-partisan celebration of peace, justice, solidarity, music and community action”, and you can read more about it here.

Morello also joined Springsteen at every date of his ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’ tour of the US earlier this year, duetting with him on ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Chimes Of Freedom’ and others.

In 2024, he spoke to NME backstage at Download Festival about the power of music to spark political change, and listed his all time favourite protest songs. “Off the top of my head, some of my favourites would be ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, ‘Biko’ by Peter Gabriel, ‘Fight The Power’ by Public Enemy. There are also probably a few Rage Against The Machine Songs that make the list too…” he said.

Spotify spent the last week teasing a mysterious new project called T.R.M. on billboards across the country. Predictions varied—it’s a Selena Gomez album! No, it’s a Carti project!—but now we have the real answer: It’s a Future album called The Real Me. No other details (release date, artwork, whether Future’s frenemy Drake is involved, etc.) have been shared yet; we’ve reached out to Pluto’s rep for more information.

It’s been nearly two years since the last Future solo album, 2024’s Mixtape Pluto. In the interim, he’s hopped on tracks by Lisa, Young Thug, and the Weeknd. Earlier this year, Future appeared on J. Cole’s The Fall-Off, reunited with Drake on the latter’s Iceman, and performed alongside Tyla at the opening ceremony for the FIFA World Cup.

Revisit our 2022 review of I Never Liked You.

WASHINGTON — U.S. production of solid rocket motors is rising, but not fast enough to meet the Pentagon’s missile-defense program demands, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The report says solid rocket motors remain a bottleneck across the U.S. missile industrial base, even as the Pentagon prepares for a sharp increase in interceptor production. The Defense Department’s 2027 budget request includes more than $73 billion for missile programs across mandatory and discretionary funding, up from a prior peak of $29 billion in 2024, according to CSIS.

The Pentagon expects deliveries of more than 2,100 air and missile defense interceptors in calendar year 2027, a roughly 70% increase from nearly 1,300 in 2021. But CSIS says that level remains well below the department’s stated production goals of roughly 5,000 interceptors a year across Army, Navy and Air Force programs.

“Achieving these goals will require dealing with myriad challenges to increasing interceptor production,” the report says. It adds that the targets were set before Operation Epic Fury, which could increase pressure to replenish interceptors used in early 2026.

The study, sponsored by Raytheon Technologies, Ursa Major and X-Bow Systems, argues that the air and missile defense interceptor industrial base isn’t configured for a long conflict with high missile-expenditure rates. A central concern is that solid rocket motors sit beneath nearly every major U.S. missile program. Problems in motor production, propellant ingredients, nozzles, inspection capacity or the specialized workforce can ripple across multiple weapon lines.

The current constraints reflect years of consolidation. Between 2000 and 2015, the domestic solid rocket motor industry shrank from six suppliers to two: Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK. Those companies are now part of L3Harris and Northrop Grumman, respectively.

A new group of entrants has since moved into the market, including X-Bow, Ursa Major, Firehawk, Castelion, Anduril, Nammo, Avio USA and Prometheus Energetics. CSIS says those companies could eventually diversify the supply base, but many haven’t yet shown they can move from prototypes or limited production into large production lots.

The report also points to a shift in the space industry. Commercial launch once helped support demand for solid rocket motors, particularly during the Space Shuttle era. But much of the commercial launch market has moved toward liquid propulsion, reducing the space sector’s role as a stabilizing source of demand for solid motor suppliers.

CSIS argues that fixing the problem will require more than emergency funding. The report calls for stable demand signals, multiyear buying, direct investment in suppliers, requirements reform and broader acceptance of new suppliers.

The Pentagon’s $1 billion investment in L3Harris solid rocket motor production is useful, the report says, but such direct-to-supplier intervention “cannot substitute for more proactive supply chain management by both the government and prime contractors.” CSIS says these investments tend to address visible bottlenecks rather than prevent future ones, and can’t replace sustained demand from the government customer.

The report also says acquisition rules and cost-focused requirements can make it harder to introduce new materials, components and manufacturing processes. That can limit flexibility for established suppliers while slowing the entry of newer companies.

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I can’t stand this Lexie/Abe/Paulina storyline.

It’s just too cruel, and Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week of 6-15-26 suggest it’s about to get worse.

Meanwhile, Holly and Tate encounter trouble at the Horton Cabin — could Sophia not be dead after all?

Holly and Tate’s Drama Is More Predictable, But What Exactly Is Going On Here?

It’s unsurprising that Holly and Tate end up in trouble at the Horton Cabin — that place is never as idyllic as promised.

In the past, the cabin has been the source of kidnappings, fires, and storm-related accidents, so there was no way that Holly, Ari, Tate, and Aaron were going to have a fun, or even an uneventful, time.

The only question is what will happen to them.

Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week of 6-15-26 show Holly collapsing in Tate’s arms, likely tied to the ongoing investigation into tainted drugs.

Amy would love to think that Holly was still using drugs recreationally so she could discredit her further, but she doesn’t seem the murderous type, so it’s not likely that she’s involved — but her supposedly dead daughter is another story.

After all, Sophia poisoned Holly before, and her body was never found. So could she be hiding out at the cabin or messing with Holly’s prescription again?

The other possibility is that EJ’s plan to get Amy goes horribly wrong — possibly on purpose.

EJ is diabolical. His revenge plans are never straightforward.

Although he loves his former stepdaughter (or, at least, claims to), I wouldn’t put it past EJ to poison Holly in order to implicate Amy somehow, thus getting rid of her, but at the risk of Holly’s life.

That doesn’t quite feel right yet, but nothing does, and EJ’s twisted involvement makes as much sense as anything else.

Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week of 6-15-26 have Brady’s investigation into Destiny’s suspicious death lead to the conclusion that DiMera Pharmaceuticals might have been involved.

EJ will need to cover his tracks fast if that’s the case, especially if it also is about to become public knowledge that something is wrong with the so-called miracle drug that resurrected Lexie.

So, if Sophia isn’t secretly alive, EJ might want to simultaneously point attention at the dead girl’s ghost (or her mother) and cover the problems with Dimera Pharmaceuticals. Maybe.

Meanwhile, Abe and Lexie Cause More Pain for Paulina

This Lexie/Abe/Paulina triangle is not good, soapy drama. It’s a mess with an expiration date, and the sooner this ends, the better.

First of all, it’s beyond cruel for Lexie to die again or be in danger of it. Abe and Theo already mourned the loss once, and there is no need to put them through this again.

Lexie’s decision to keep her health status secret so she doesn’t worry them is also cruel. It’s understandable that she doesn’t want to cause unnecessary pain, but if she’s at risk of developing dementia and then dying and they don’t even know, that will make it worse when she does succumb to the disease.

Should Lexie tell Abe and Theo the truth?
We want to know your thoughts! Tell us in the comments, and don’t forget to share this article with your friends.

Of course, Rolf has good news on that front, according to Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week of 6-15-26 — but that is likely a false positive.

Lexie is only supposed to be in Salem for a few months, and there isn’t any logical way to write her out besides another death. I suppose she could have an epiphany and leave town so that Abe and Paulina can reunite, but that would feel arbitrary and unsatisfying.

Putting aside the issue of her impending death, Lexie promises to be cruel in another way, although in this case, it may be accidental.

The Days of Our Lives spoiler video suggests that Lexie is surprised to learn that Paulina and Abe’s anniversary fell on Juneteenth after running into Paulina at the holiday’s annual celebration.

That will make Paulina’s pain even worse. Not only does she not have her husband on their third or fourth anniversary (I’ve lost track, and anyway, Days of Our Lives could always invent a number if it feels like it!), but she has to run into him and Lexie while trying to keep her mind off the loss.

This will be especially hard to bear right now because Paulina is so worried about Chanel’s health while trying to put on a good face for her daughter.

Paulina is so desperate that she begged EJ for help. I don’t understand how the resurrection drug could possibly help a still-alive person who is fighting an aggressive cancer, but Salem logic says it could, and Paulina is devastated that EJ won’t give Chanel the drug.

Johnny and Chanel will undoubtedly reject the idea of this kind of help anyway, but it’s not clear what they will do or how they will feel once Chanel’s chemo begins and she’s seriously ill or there is a threat to the baby’s health.

What Else Is Going On In Salem?

There are plenty of other Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week of 6-15-26, so if you don’t like these two stories, don’t panic!

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Alex will ask Kayla for advice about Joy’s ultimatum while Stephanie struggles with her conscience, Chad and EJ will both be jealous of each other’s relationship with their ex, and Theo may discover something new about that chessboard that Stefano left Marlena.

Plus, Julie and Marlena discuss life’s challenges, which will be sure to give the family-and-friends vibe that has made Days of Our Lives popular for six decades.

Which of these spoilers excites you the most, Days of Our Lives fanatics?

Let us know in the comments! Feel free to share your favorite theories about what might happen on Days of Our Lives during the week of 6-15-26 and beyond.

Please share this article with your friends who watch Days of our Lives so they can join the conversation.

You can vote in our poll below for your favorite Days of Our Lives spoiler for the week of 6-15-26.

If you enjoyed this article, check out our recent editorial about Sarah’s new storyline.

These Days of Our Lives spoilers will stream on Peacock during the week of 6-15-26. New episodes drop on weekday mornings at 6/5c.

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The plane will soon be ready to fly over US communities.

Eight year’s after the Fall frontman Mark E. Smith died of lung and kidney cancer, the English post-punk band has announced a final album. Post Script will arrive on Cog Sinister Records in mid-September, per a press release, and a lead single, “30 Degrees,” is out now. Listen to that below.

“30 Degrees” was co-written by the late Smith and bandmates Simon Archer and Ed Blaney in Salford, England. The album gathers nine tracks total, and marks the group’s first full-length release since 2017’s New Facts Emerge. They also released a box set of live performances in 2018, and a live album in 2021. A book on the band, Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, came out the same year.

Revisit 10 Songs That Defined the Fall and Mark E. Smith.

01 30 Degrees 
02 So Long
03 Colonel’s Retreat
04 Caveat 
05 Final Position 
06 Retro Song
07 Irish Northern Man
08 Dehydrated 
09 The Book

WASHINGTON — SpaceX shares rose on the first day of trading as the company went public in a milestone event for both the company and the broader space industry.

SpaceX sold nearly 555.6 million shares at $135 per share in an initial public offering June 12, raising $75 billion before expenses for the company. SpaceX did not change details about the IPO after disclosing the number of shares and pricing June 3.

SpaceX shares started trading on the Nasdaq exchange at about 11:45 a.m. Eastern June 12 at $150 per share. They closed at $160.95, an increase of 19.2% over the IPO price, giving SpaceX a market cap of about $2.1 trillion.

The IPO is the largest in stock market history, far surpassing the $29.4 billion raised by oil company Saudi Aramco when it went public in 2019. SpaceX has the option to sell an additional 83.3 million shares, raising $11.25 billion more for the company.

SpaceX first signaled an interest last December in going public after stating for years that it would remain privately held to focus on long-term ambitions such as human missions to Mars. Going public, the company said, would enable it to pursue new opportunities such as orbital data centers.

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk has argued that data centers in space, launched by the company’s Starship vehicle, would be more cost-effective than terrestrial data centers in meeting demand from artificial intelligence applications. SpaceX has since proposed a constellation of 1 million data center satellites and merged with xAI, the AI company Musk also led.

In a May 20 prospectus for the IPO filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX revealed it had $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 but a net loss of $4.9 billion because of investments in both AI and Starship. The company had $4.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026 but a net loss of $4.3 billion.

“We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund our growth strategy, including the expansion of our AI compute infrastructure, enhancements to our launch infrastructure and launch vehicles, increases in the scale and capacity of our satellite constellations, and any remaining amounts for general corporate purposes,” the company stated in the prospectus.

The IPO is an exclamation point on the rise of SpaceX, which Musk started in 2002 in California but which was dismissed by many in the space industry at the time. The company is now the dominant provider of launch services worldwide, and its Starlink broadband constellation has more than 10 million customers.

Even Musk thought the odds of success for SpaceX were long.

“I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all,” he said, recalling its founding in remarks from the company’s Starbase, Texas, facilities to celebrate the IPO. “I said, look, we’re probably going to fail, but we should give it a try, because if we don’t, if there’s not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly spacefaring civilization.”

“It is certainly hard to believe that little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,” he said.

Neither Musk nor SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell discussed future plans for SpaceX at IPO events, but Shotwell said in an interview with CNBC that the company would focus on Starship, Starlink and its AI initiatives.

“I wasn’t sure we would go public,” she said, because of a focus on long-term projects. “But we’ve gotten so many of the building blocks completed for so many of these different business areas, it actually feels like the right time now.”

“Our horizons are very long term. I do not want to focus on quarterly earnings,” she said. “I’m not saying we’re not going to do right by our investors, but what folks that invest in SpaceX, SpaceXAI, need to know is they need to know that what we’re doing is very futuristic and we should be thinking about the future as well as the current quarter.”

She did touch on some near-term milestones in the interview, including plans for the next Starship test flight. That will be another suborbital test flight, she confirmed, after some issues with the Flight 12 launch May 22.

“So we’ll improve that, we’ll fix that, learn that lesson, address it, get back to flight,” she said.

If that Flight 13 mission is successful, she said the company may attempt an orbital test flight on Flight 14, followed by its first Starship launch from Florida on Flight 15. She also said she expected the company to start launching its first Starlink V3 satellites on Starship later this year.

At an event at Nasdaq’s New York offices to mark the IPO, she noted that earlier in the morning the company conducted another Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites.

“I hope today is a day you feel great about and that you’re celebrating. Take a moment,” she told employees gathered at the event. “Now, the Falcon recovery team can’t take a moment today, but everybody else can, and I hope the Falcon recovery team can take a moment a little bit later.”

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Can I scream that my favorite couple finally tied the knot? It was a long, hard battle to get there, but they made it.

Throughout Sweet Magnolias, the series often focused more on the ladies’ feelings and motivations in their friendships and romances. The viewers are in for a treat.

Sweet Magnolias Season 5 flipped the script. While we saw lots of Helen, the series dove into Erik’s family drama and explored his upbringing and how it clashed with his relationship with Helen.

If you’ve ever planned a wedding, you know how challenging it can be to balance family expectations with your desires.

Erik felt immense pressure from his rigid family and his passionate bride, which made for a dramatic season in which he learned the importance of honoring his own beliefs and speaking his truth.

Erik and Helen Appeared Blissfully Happy Until He Worried About Appearances

At the beginning of Sweet Magnolias Season 5, Erik and Helen seemed blissfully happy and madly in love.

It was romantic yet hilarious how they had two different ideas for their honeymoon. I hope Erik wins, especially if they do a location shot in Paris.

They would be so romantic to honeymoon in the city of love, and a chef could appreciate that even more.

However, when the couple began planning the actual wedding, Erik seemed unsettled. Part of that was because his parents weren’t overly fond of his late wife, so he had a do-over with planning and wanted to please them and appease Helen.

Helen didn’t understand why he wouldn’t ask his brother to be involved or why his parents wouldn’t love anything they planned, since her mom and brother were so excited.

She wanted to help, but Erik knew how his family worked.

Erik used to admire Helen’s way of solving problems, so I disliked him insinuating she couldn’t fix it with “Magnolia magic.”

You couldn’t totally fault Helen and her cajoling and sarcasm. Erik wouldn’t confide in her. Using “Whitley” as a word for complicated in a crossword puzzle fit perfectly, but probably didn’t amuse Erik.

No One Should Tone Down Helen’s Boldness

Helen Decatur is bold and beautiful, and she wanted everyone to appreciate her and Erik’s passionate yet imperfect relationship. That’s why I love and respect her.

She didn’t understand why their wedding should cater to other people’s desires when the wedding should’ve focused on them.

I suspect that’s why Helen struggled to select a wedding gown. She feared her dream would go up in flames or that she would embarrass Erik in front of his family on what should have been the happiest day of her life.

I know wedding planning is stressful, but bright, colorful flowers just screamed Helen. While using white blooms with the blue bridesmaid dresses would technically match, it didn’t fit the bride’s personality or their relationship.

I understood Helen’s frustration. There is nothing more frustrating than when your man wants things to be perfect, but he’s not on the same page. 

As a lawyer, Helen longed to communicate and fix things, and Erik wouldn’t open up. But the turning point was when he kept insisting that he wanted his family’s acceptance.

My heart went out to Helen because she thought they were building a family, and she was the most important person in his life. I know how much she loved Erik, but she needed him to take a hard look at his priorities.

Erik Learned More About Himself and The Whitley Way From His Niece

Erik (Dion Johnstone) has always been meticulous about details and never talked about why he moved to Serenity. Everyone assumed it was because he needed space to grieve after Vera died.

While that was part of it, he needed to get away from his father’s ridicule and harassment. As a result, everything was left on his brother Victor’s shoulders, and their relationship worsened.

Erik didn’t realize how horrible things had gotten until his niece, Jessica, arrived unexpectedly.

Jessica quickly became one of my favorite characters because while she was raised to be polite and poised, she also believed in communicating to solve problems like Helen.

She left her house because her parents were going through an ugly divorce, and her father took his frustration out on her and her college grades.

She had hoped to find a haven with Erik and Helem, not thinking about the stress they’d be under.

Having Jessica there for the summer changed things for Erik. He and Helen already mentored his kitchen staff and Annie and CeCe, but Jessica reminded him of a younger version of himself with her ideals.

She also heard so much of the Whitley Way that she believed Erik left home and abandoned his family to become a chef. She wanted to see why it appealed to him and be like him.

At the same time, Jessica grew fond of Helen, urging Erik not to follow the Whitleys unthinkingly when he had such a loyal, loving partner. 

She helped him realize he could honor the Whitleys and Helen by balancing both, while Erik and Helen assisted Jessica in reconciling with her father.

Erik and Helen Fought for Each Other, and It Was Worth It

While wedding planning can be fun, marriage is hard work, and it’s even more challenging when you include your spouse’s family.

Erik was lucky. Bev Decatur adored him because he made her daughter happy. Erik’s family was all about fitting into rules and regimens and family loyalty.

While it seemed like his parents liked Helen, he seemed scared to rock the boat and seemed determined to have an understated wedding.

Helen wanted to support Erik, but she needed her voice heard, too, since, as his future wife, her desires should have been more important than his parents’.

I was totally team Helen. It was heartbreaking that it took a tragedy for Erik to realize that Helen was the most important person in his life, but I loved that make-up scene.

It included fiery passion and sincere, emotional remorse. We learned so much about Erik in that scene.

He really is attracted to strong, passionate, and independent women, who are the exact opposite of his parents.

 He feared his parents would never treat Helen as more than a polite stranger after his experience of how they treated Vera, and that fear overtook him.

I appreciated that Erik knew he messed up and asked for forgiveness. It was never a question of Helen breaking up with, but more getting their visions aligned again.

He underestimated Helen because she worked her magic to bring peace to his family. I was impressed when his mother realized they had pushed Erik away, and Helen promised they’d each hold a part of him.

The Wedding Represented Erik and Helen Perfectly

Weddings should represent both couples, and in the end, their wedding represented Erik and Helen beautifully.

I’m tickled pink that Heather Headley won, and Helen got the elaborate and elegant wedding she longed for, right down to the long lacy veil.

How wonderful it was that the entire female community helped to make her veil, because they were excited for her and Erik.

The attire was all Helen, but the cuisine was pure Erik. His kitchen staff is like family to him, so I loved that they prepared the wedding feast, and Issac performed double duty, standing up for Erik.

Erik had never entrusted anyone with his grandmother’s brownie recipe before Issac, so that was a huge step.

But those brownies were one of the things Helen loved best about Erik since he first brought them to cheer her up. They’ve been a mainstay in their relationship, so it made perfect sense to display them at the wedding.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the best part of the wedding since there were so many emotional moments.

However, I would choose Helen, singing Heather Headley’s original song, “If It Wasn’t For Your Love,” to Erik before the first dance. There was something magical about that scene.

Sweet Magnolias has featured some poignant weddings over the years, but this one held a special place in my heart.

Helen and Erik fought to get here, and we actually saw the wedding planning and the parties.

These two have come so far over the years. While I’d love to see them foster some teenagers in their next chapter, if Sweet Magnolias does end, I’m thrilled they got their happy ending.

Over to you, TV Fanatics. Did you enjoy learning more about Chef Erik? Were you as enchanted by the wedding as I was? What else would you like to see for the couple?

Let us know in the comments.

Love Sweet Magnolias? We do too — and we want to keep writing about it.
Your comment or share can help make sure we get to. That’s the magic of supporting indie media.

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Paramount Skydance is cleared to move forward with its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the US Department of Justice announced Friday. The deal marks a tectonic shift in the American media landscape, further dwindling the number of major players in the industry and drastically expanding the influence of the Ellison family.

In its press release announcing the approval, the DoJ shot down arguments against the merger. It denied that the acquisition of Fox by Disney some years ago could be used as a case study, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as an interfering factor which renders the comparison moot. It also dismissed labor concerns which have been widely voiced by industry workers. On June 9, it was reported that The United Kingdom is conducting its own investigation of the deal, a factor which may have advanced the DoJ’s timeline.

With the acquisition of Warner and its associated brands, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison will run the historic Warner Bros. Studios, as well as HBO and its streaming counterpart HBO Max. CNN Worldwide, a major broadcast rightsholder for The Olympics and the NHL, among others, is also included in the deal, as is Warner Bros. Games. The company already owned Paramount and its TV subsidiaries including CBS, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon. David Ellison’s father, the billionaire Larry Ellison, is reported to be providing $45.7 billion worth of equity to float the deal. The elder Ellison owns Oracle, a major provider of server infrastructure. Oracle recently joined a consortium of investors for a 45% stake in the American operations of the popular short-form video platform TikTok. Together, the father-son duo now control a media portfolio to rival Disney’s. (Megan Ellison, the senior Ellison’s daughter, has her own media venture which is independent of the father-son duo’s portfolio.)

The DoJ approval for the deal comes on the heels of multiple scandals at CBS News, which have sparked fear regarding the future of CNN. Larry Ellison is a personal friend of president Donald Trump, who has suggested that CNN’s current leadership is “corrupt and incompetent.” Under the Ellisons’ control of Paramount, Bari Weiss was installed as the head of CBS News, and she wasted no time gutting the legacy news organization. Now, the fear is that a similar fate could befall CNN.

Most recently, Weiss fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, a decision which led Pelley and remaining 60 Minutes staffers to speak out, with Pelley claiming the venerated news show is being “murdered” by Weiss. A 60 Minutes report on conditions in ICE facilities was scuttled in December, and correspondent Cecelia Vega was fired in May while working on a report about Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories who was sanctioned by the US. Vega’s journalistic work was withheld from her during the firing, raising concerns that her sources might be exposed by CBS.

Under Ellisons’ control, CBS also moved to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a decision Paramount Skydance claimed was purely motivated by financial realities but which came on the heels of a Colbert segment which pointedly criticized a $16 million settlement paid to president Trump by CBS.

In May, over 5,500 movie and television industry professionals signed an open letter warning that the acquisition of Warner by Paramount would “threaten the sustainability of the entire creative community.” Signees include Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, Kevin Bacon and many other household Hollywood names.

While DoJ approval was the biggest hurdle for the landmark deal, state attorneys general in California and New York have indicated their intent to bring challenges against it, in addition to an investigation by European Officials and the aforementioned investigation by the UK. Paramount Skydance has until September 30 to officially close the deal before it will become subject to a daily ticking fee of $7 million for Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.

Dave Grohl has reflected on the day he broke his leg on stage as Foo Fighters returned to Sweden for a show exactly 11 years later.

It was during the second song (‘Monkey Wrench’) of a gig at Gothenburg’s Ullevi Stadium on June 12, 2015 that the frontman fell from the stage and broke his leg in an accident that ultimately forced the band to cancel their Glastonbury headline set that year, as well as a pair of shows at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Tonight (June 12), 11 years to the day since that fateful show, Foo Fighters found themselves back in the same country for a gig at the Strawberry Arena in Solna as part of their ‘Take Cover’ tour.

The irony was not lost on Grohl, who took a moment while introducing the song ‘Walk’ to remember that day. “I fell off the stage and I bust my fucking leg,” he said. “That was 11 years ago today. Same day! How fucking weird is that. Coincidence? I don’t think so!”

“So, tonight,” he continued, “I’m gonna sing this song real fucking hard, because honestly, I think it was my favourite Foo Fighters show we’ve ever had in our fucking lives. Because we kept playing, we finished that fucking show for you. So we’ll sing this song for you.”

The band only stopped playing for a few minutes after Grohl’s fall, and remarkably, he rejoined them for the rest of the show, after briefly leaving the stage to get a cast put on his leg.

They returned to the stage just a few weeks later on July 4 in Washington DC, with Grohl sitting in a throne with his leg propped up.

Florence + The Machine ended up stepping into their headline slot at Glastonbury 2015, with Foo Fighters finally topping the bill in 2017. During that show, Grohl thanked both Florence and his surgeon James.

“I’m about two years late tonight, I’m sorry. Traffic was a bitch,” Grohl said. “But I watched [Florence’s] show on my laptop as I was sitting in a wheelchair with a broken leg, and it looked beautiful. And my friend Florence got to headline that year, and I’m very happy that that happened, because you know what? I thought she should have been headlining anyway.”

Foo Fighters’ current tour will see them play two nights in Liverpool on June 25 and 27, and will also include their festival appearances at Mad Cool and NOS Alive festival. Support across various dates will include Royel Otis, Inhaler, IDLES, Otoboke Beaver, Fat Dog and Die Spitz. Get any remaining tickets here.

They released their new album ‘Your Favorite Toy’ in April, which NME gave 3 and a half stars, noting: ‘Your Favorite Toy’ is a few more tracks of that depth away from being the most vital Foo Fighters record since 1997’s ‘The Colour and the Shape’,” we wrote. “For now, at least, they have remembered that no-frills punk, played fast and loud, suits them much better than middle-of-the-road dad-rock.”

The-Dream, the Beyoncé and Rihanna hitmaker who is being sued by a former collaborator alleging rape, sexual battery, and sex trafficking, has confirmed his comeback with a new album. (The-Dream has denied the allegations in the 2024 lawsuit.) The-Dream’s own label, Radio Killa, and the Universal imprint Republic will release the sequel to his 2007 album Love/Hate on July 10. Among those on the Love/Hate II guest list are Pusha T, Swizz Beatz, T.I., Kelly Rowland, Rick Ross, and, on a single released today called “Tampa,” Usher.

The-Dream announced his return in May in a wide-ranging interview with Variety that made no mention of the allegations or ongoing lawsuit. The case, brought by the Dutch singer and songwriter Chanaaz Mangroe following months of alleged abuse in the mid 2010s, remains active in California’s District Court, with the-Dream’s legal team filing orders as recently as last week, requesting a deadline extension to gather evidence.

Just under Earth’s surface, 110 quadrillion kilometres of carbon-rich fungi intersect with plant roots. This vast network has been laid bare in the first global digital map of our planet’s mycelial networks. Not only do these fungi exchange nutrients with plants, they also help regulate our climate.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, an ancient group of soil fungi found throughout most terrestrial ecosystems, form symbiotic relationships with about 70 per cent of the world’s plant species, providing nutrients and water in exchange for carbon. “Some people call plants the saviours of these fungi, but these fungi are also the saviours of plants,” says Justin Stewart at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. “If you’re not in symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, you’re kind of the weirdo of the plant world.”

Given the fungi’s importance, Stewart and his colleagues set out to quantify this hidden infrastructure. “We asked the question: can we map the Earth’s underground circulatory system?” says team member Toby Kiers, also at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.

First, the researchers analysed data from 16,000 soil samples from across Earth, derived from 322 previous studies. They also used robotic imaging to measure more than 300,000 fungal threads grown in the lab, allowing them to estimate the total biomass and carbon stored in the networks. Next, the team combined that data and used it to extend estimates across deserts, tundra, forests and other regions where direct measurements were sparse or unavailable.

The results suggest that worldwide arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi networks harbour a mass of carbon equivalent to about five times that of all living humans combined. “They’re very important for a lot of the different functions of our planet,” says Stewart. “For example, they pull carbon underground – that’s important for climate change.”

The researchers also estimate that around 40 per cent of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi live in grassland ecosystems, especially those of South Sudan, the Florida Everglades and the Tibetan plateau. That’s concerning, they say, since grasslands are rapidly being transformed into farmlands.

Croplands, meanwhile, show significantly reduced fungal presence, with large-scale crop-growing soils associated with about 50 per cent lower network densities than those in uncultivated ecosystems, despite their high presence of plants. That could be because fungicides can kill fungi directly, while tilling can break apart their networks and heavy fertiliser use may undermine the nutrient-for-carbon trade that normally sustains the symbiosis, says Stewart.

Last year, Laura Carter at the University of Leeds, UK, and her colleagues revealed that azole antifungals – a widely employed class of chemicals used to control fungal diseases like mildew and rot in crops – cut the density of hyphae (the long, straw-like tube cells of fungi) by around 70 per cent and reduced the extent to which beneficial fungi colonise plant roots by up to 80 per cent. That, combined with the new findings, “suggests current practices may be undermining a key natural ally of crops”, says Carter. “Supporting arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi isn’t just an ecological issue; it is a practical route to improving soil health, resilience and long-term crop productivity.”

Steven Allison at the University of California, Irvine, says he is particularly concerned about the thinner network under croplands. “With that biomass being knocked down so much, our agricultural crops may be missing out on some key benefits like nutrient access, drought resilience and carbon storage.”

But there is a positive side as well, he adds. Now the researchers have quantified the scale of the losses, it should be easier to design interventions to rebuild fungal biomass. “Farmers could add fungal spores to their soils,” says Allison. “The study might also prompt farmers to adjust their practices, by reducing tillage or adding less fertiliser.”

While the work reveals expansive networks, it doesn’t mean all fungi are connected in a global “wood wide web” – a hypothesised underground network through which plants exchange resources and information, says Stewart. “Our research here was just asking how many threads are there on Earth, not if this is one large, continuous network.”

Alongside the study, the researchers have launched an interactive map that reveals the global distribution of fungal networks in unprecedented detail. Kiers says they plan to present the findings to policy-makers at the United Nations desertification summit in Mongolia this August.

Topics:

SAN FRANCISCO – The European Space Agency awarded AAC Clyde Space a 10.9 million euro ($12.6 million) contract to complete development and demonstrate VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) satellites for the Inflecion maritime domain awareness program.

With the 12-satellite Inflecion constellation, AAC Clyde is developing a low-cost approach to detecting, tracking and monitoring maritime vessels, including ships that turn off their automated identification system (AIS) transponders.

“We combine synthetic aperture radar [SAR] with signals intelligence, and then we use the VHS Data Exchange System that is AIS compatible to communicate with the ships and with the authorities,” AAC Clyde Space CEO Luis Gomes told SpaceNews.

Since VDES enables two-way communication, “we will be able to challenge ships to identify themselves,” Gomes said. “The system allows you to do that kind of verification and authentication of shipping.”

Iceye UK will provide SAR data and Horizon Technologies of Reading, England, will supply signals intelligence. Inflecion’s VDES services are scheduled to be demonstrated in early 2029.

ESA and the UK Space Agency are sharing the cost of Inflecion, an ESA Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems Partnership Project. AAC Clyde Space completed phase one of the Inflecion program earlier this year.

Aside from Inflecion, AAC Clyde Space plans to launch additional VDES satellites to expand its maritime-monitoring business.

“We are proud to lead a consortium of highly qualified partners to advance this next generation service in maritime intelligence from space,” Gomes said in a statement. “We see increasing demand for resilient space-based maritime intelligence. Inflecion allows us to develop precisely that service.”

Christophe Allemand, who manages ESA Space Systems for Safety and Security, said in a statement that Inflecion will provide “dedicated connectivity for critical maritime operational services and more timely and reliable information from space” to support “safer, more resilient and more sustainable maritime operations.”

Henny Sands, UK Space Agency Satellite Communications head, said in a statement that Inflecion “brings together leading industrial and academic partners to develop capabilities that will improve maritime safety and awareness, and support more resilient and efficient global shipping.”

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Do Nothing have announced their second album ‘Friend World’ and shared the melancholic single ‘Stars’ – listen below.

The Nottingham band released their debut record ‘Snake Sideways’ in 2023 and now they are back, with ‘Friend World’ to be released on November 6 via Submarine Cat Records. Pre-order/pre-save your copy here.

Built around drum machine patterns and squelchy synths, ‘Stars’ is quietly melancholic, with frontman Chris Bailey singing: “We’re stars, the world is a worm on a strong / Hanging around, let’s not amount to anything”.

Bailey has said about the song: “I guess the simplest interpretation of this one would be that it’s about ambition, and people who are famous, and all the ways in which it doesn’t make them happy people. More than that though, I’d say it’s about finding someone you connect with enough that you quit caring about the other things that used to drive you.”

Check out the video, directed by Clump Collective, here:

“Getting away from the guitar was useful,” Bailey added. “We didn’t want it to sound particularly rocky or aggressive. We’re always interested in finding energy and momentum without relying on the obvious ways of creating them.”

‘Friend World’ has been produced and mixed by Louis Milburn of Folly Group and was recorded in Nottingham’s JT Soar.

Explaining how the new album deviates from ‘Snake Sideways’, Bailey has said: “With the first record there was a feeling of trying to move away from what people expected of us. This time we felt much freer. We didn’t feel any pressure to make a departure. We could follow whatever ideas felt exciting and not worry about what it meant.”

The album was inspired by novelist Elizabeth Smart and the leftfield comedian Andy Kaufman, who used to end shows by singing the song ‘This Friendly World’. “It’s this big, face-value expression of positivity that rang so weirdly to me,” Bailey has said. “I found it difficult to interpret the lyrics as anything other than sarcasm.”

“For me it’s an album about a lot of bleak things, but it doesn’t feel bleak,” he added. “I enjoyed making it more than anything we’ve ever done, and I’m more proud of it than anything we’ve ever made. That’s the whole point of the title really. There’s two sides to everything. Without the bad, there isn’t the good.”

Do Nothing – ‘Friend World’ tracklist: 

1. ‘Misery’ 
2. ‘The Nail’ 
3. ‘Act Natural’ 
4. ‘These People Want Blood’ 
5. ‘Stars’ 
6. ‘Smile’ 
7. ‘Dog 2’ 
8. ‘Loner’ 
9. ‘Yes’ 
10. ‘Paris Jesus’ 
11. ‘Incommunicado’ 

NME awarded ‘Snake Sideways’ three stars in 2023, noting: “The freshness that electrified ‘LeBron James’, though, is no longer so obvious, with its striding conviction now somewhat smoothed over. It remains to be seen whether Do Nothing can use the solid foundations of ‘Snake Sideways’ as a launching pad to ascend to the giddy heights of their initial promise.”

Telefone, the piercing 2016 breakout debut from Noname, turns ten this year, and the Chicago rapper is celebrating it with a late-summer anniversary trek. It kicks off in Toronto on August 2 and ends with a September 10 hometown show. Check out the full list of stops below. Two months after the tour ends, she will take the Telefone festivities across the Atlantic to Pitchfork Festival London in November.

“I hope you were there,” Noname said in an Instagram post announcing the performances. “I hope 10 years ago in some small corner of the world you heard the imagination of young folks from the city of chicago. Telefone was already breathing when I discovered it. It sat, quietly whispering to me between every blunt rotation outside youmedia, after every conversation with cam about the texture of sound, after I lived along enough to sing about it. Telefone was raised by a community.”

Revisit Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s 2023 profile of Noname.

Telefone Ten Year Anniversary Tour
08-02 Toronto, Ontario – The Opera House
08-04 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
08-05 New York, NY – Sony Hall
08-06 Philadelphia, PA – Brooklyn Bowl
08-08 Richmond, VA – Richmond Jazz Festival
08-09 Washington, DC – Howard Theatre
08-11 Atlanta, GA – The Loft
08-14 Houston, TX – House of Blues
08-15 Austin, TX – Emo’s
08-16 Dallas, TX – House of Blues
08-18 Denver, CO – Cervantes
09-01 Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda
09-02 San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
09-04 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
09-06 Seattle, WA – Bumbershoot Festival
09-10 Chicago, IL – Park West

HOUSTON — The astronaut named commander of Artemis 3 is confident that his crew will be ready for what NASA has called one of the most complex missions in the agency’s history in just a year.

NASA named veteran astronaut Randy Bresnik as commander of Artemis 3 during a June 9 ceremony at the Johnson Space Center, along with the other three members of the crew: NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano.

The four will fly a two-week mission in low Earth orbit on an Orion spacecraft that will include docking with prototypes of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander, testing those spacecraft before later crewed lunar landing attempts.

NASA has been planning a mid-2027 launch of Artemis 3, which means the four astronauts will have only about one year to train together before flying what NASA called in a social media post before the crew announcement “one of history’s most complex missions.”

In an interview a few hours after the announcement, Bresnik said he believed that his crew would be ready in time. “I’ve been working Orion and everything that goes beyond Earth orbit for eight years, and so I’ve got a lot of Orion experience,” he said, including serving as an astronaut representative to the mission management team on Artemis 2.

Douglas, while a rookie astronaut, has experience from working as a backup astronaut on Artemis 2. “Between the two of us, we’ll be able to get Luca and Frank up to speed pretty quick, and so I fully expect that a year will be sufficient,” he said.

He added that the crew of Apollo 11 was named in January 1969, six months before that historic lunar landing mission. “So if they can do that in six months, we can make one year.”

Bresnik said the Artemis 2 mission provided confidence in the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket that launched it. That included the proximity operations, or “prox ops,” demonstration done on Artemis 2, where the Orion spacecraft maneuvered around its upper stage just after separating from it.

“The prox ops demonstration of Artemis 2 showed that this thing flies very, very well,” he said. “It also proved out the modeling that we were using for Artemis 2 to make our simulators work was pretty darn close.”

Artemis 2 also provided insight into how much training is needed. “The training load timewise is going to be much reduced from what they had,” he said.

There will be some new elements to Orion for Artemis 3, including a docking port and systems to assist with docking, but Bresnik did not consider Orion overall the “long pole” for the mission. “It is having the lunar lander variants or test articles up in space for us to do our work. That’s the biggest thing,” he said, something the crew will be closely tracking this summer.

Because of uncertainty about the landers and the specifics of the mission profile, he said the crew will focus its initial training on Orion. “We get to just dive into Orion and just go whole hog on Orion, and get really as up to speed as we can,” he said.

“When there is more fidelity on exactly what altitude and how the rendezvous are going to go, when that gets figured out on the mission profile, then we’ll be able to do that specific training, already having a good bit of Orion training under our belt,” he said.

Bresnik said one of the things he is looking forward to on Artemis 3 is to “complete as many flight testing objectives they can pack in that’ll buy down risk for the next mission,” which would be a crewed lunar landing attempt on Artemis 4.

“Spaceflight is hard and that’s why the most important Artemis mission will always be the next Artemis mission,” he said at the crew announcement event. “Every single mission we do after this will be more challenging and more complex.”

Related

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

Prime is on quite the generational run.

If there is one thing they are proving without a doubt that they know how to do, and do well, it’s pull off a sun-drenched summer romance.

While many of its themes may draw comparisons to The Summer I Turned Pretty (ahem: a disgustingly beautiful locale, two handsome blue-eyed brothers, the trials and tribulations of coming of age), Every Year After charts its own course.

Based on Carley Fortune’s debut novel Every Summer After, this 8-episode season follows the sweet, yet often fraught, friends-to-lovers relationship between Percy Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett).

We join them as they navigate all the magic and pain of young love — and the lasting impact it leaves, even as adults.

The show opens on our main character, Percy, a struggling obituary writer living in Seattle, giving a speech at her best friend Chantal’s (Aurora Perrineau) engagement party.

After leaving for a quick hook-up with the groom’s half-brother, she receives a call from Sam’s brother, Charlie (Michael Bradway).

Their mother, Sue (Elisha Cuthbert), has recently passed away from cancer, and Charlie is calling to invite Percy to the memorial service.

Percy then experiences a panic attack, and in an interesting use of visual symbolism, she rails on her closet door that refuses to close.

It’s apt foreshadowing for the core theme of this season: once opened, some doors will not stay shut.

With Chantal in tow, Percy heads back to the lake town where she spent her teen summers, the incredibly picturesque, water-so-blue-you-can’t-believe-it’s-real Canadian lake town of Barry’s Bay.

Percy has to come to terms with her past regrets; choices that have left her estranged from the Florek brothers and her former childhood friends, Delilah (Abigail Cowen) and Jordie (Joseph Chiu).

The episodes bounce back and forth between past and present-day timelines, where we watch Percy and Sam fall in love over the course of six teenage summers and discover the (honestly, not entirely shocking) twist that derailed it all.

Barry’s Bay Expands, and for the Better

The setting of Barry’s Bay is a main character in itself.

Thankfully, there are many glorious montages of lake swimming and dock-diving, ice cream eating, and boating as the golden sun sinks behind the Canadian mountains.

I’ll be the first to admit that my kryptonite is ANY story with a lake setting. If you’re in it for the vibes, I promise, they will not disappoint.

Fans of the book may also notice several subtle changes, but the bones of the story are largely the same, keeping many of the original story beats and character details.

However, the show makes one critical change, which drastically improves the adaptation for the screen: the expansion of its supporting cast.

Every Year After knows that the secret to elevating a teen drama lies in its ensemble.

It succeeds in making its supporting cast a set of nuanced, complex characters, ones you could easily see carrying future seasons as leads.

Chantal, a Type-A lawyer, quickly becomes a favorite as she embarks on a journey to find identity beyond her work and relationships with others.

Her quick wit and chemistry with the other characters keep scenes feeling fresh and surprising.

Delilah may initially appear to be the classic mean-girl archetype, but appearances are certainly deceiving. Under her polished exterior is a sensitive, complex, and very funny friend.

Jordie is also a breath of fresh air, balancing out the ensemble with his golden retriever energy and effortless charisma.

These supporting characters add some much-needed spice, compensating for the sometimes less-than-sizzling chemistry between Sam and Percy during the present-day timeline.

Percy and Sam’s teen years are marked with some sweet, convincing yearning (an edited version of the book’s “anatomy lesson” is a high point).

But as the later episodes unravel their past mistakes, their relationship dynamic is complicated by the actions of their present-day counterparts.

The show keeps them on pretty rocky ground through to the end, and their chemistry isn’t quite strong enough to convince you to unflinchingly root for them as the season draws to a close.

Unfortunately, Every Year After also drops the ball on the partners of their main characters; Sam’s girlfriend, Taylor, and Chantal’s fiancé, Jordie, quickly become collateral damage to the Barry’s Bay crew’s drama.

While minor characters, they’re still portrayed as relatively multi-dimensional during their screen time, and it would have been nice to explore that fallout with a bit more nuance.

However, I am absolutely HOOKED on the budding love triangle between Jordie, Delilah, and Chantal… and I truly do not know how I want this to play out.

The writers do an excellent job playing up the chemistry between each pair of characters, including Delilah and Chantal, who steal every scene they’re in together.

A Tale of Two Timelines

One of the biggest strengths of the season lies in how well the actors can oscillate between their teen and adult selves.

I admit, I was skeptical about how well this could come off on screen; casting actors that can plausibly play a 10-year age gap without taking the viewer out of the story is quite a lofty task.

However, through a combination of styling and subtle acting choices, all three of our leads pull off the challenge, bouncing back and forth between their youthful energy and their more grounded, sharper adult selves with apparent ease.

Sadie Soverall delivers a particularly compelling performance, showcasing her emotional range as an ambitious, curious teen and a woman haunted by the weight of her past mistakes.

No significant suspension of disbelief needed!

Real props to the younger actors as well, who play Percy, Sam, and Charlie over their first two summers.

Not only do they look the part, but they nail the charming awkwardness and eagerness inherent to the years that straddle the gap between childhood and becoming a teenager.

Can We Talk About That Unexpected Ending?

***Spoilers for Episode 8, so if you haven’t made it that far yet, you may want to skip this!***

Fans of the book will notice that the end of the season leaves things much more open-ended than the happy ending of Every Summer After.

The novel ends with Sam, Percy, and Charlie’s relationship healed, and Percy and Sam are engaged and living in Toronto.

Every Year After does not attempt to wrap things up nearly as cleanly.

It leaves room to further explore the complicated relationship between Sam and Charlie (which is still messy and broken) and to delve into how Percy and Sam can repair their trust.

Percy is now the owner of The Tavern, and the season ends with Sam returning home to Barry’s Bay in a sweet reversal of Episode 1’s “You came home” moment. Their relationship status, however, remains up in the air.

What I did not expect was for the season to end on a cliffhanger.

Charlie sees a photo of him, Sam, and Percy as teens hanging in his boss’s office.

For those who haven’t read Charlie’s love story, this is the inciting incident of Fortune’s novel One Golden Summer!

Upon viewing that photo, he suffers what appears to be a heart attack.

Is the condition that caused his father’s heart attack genetic? Will he be okay?!

After all the final two episodes did to deepen Charlie’s character development and test Sam and Percy’s bond — along with all the teasing of the Jordie/Delilah/Chantal love triangle — I’m going to need Prime to confirm Season 2 quickly!

Over to you, Every Year After Fanatics!

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this series and how Prime Video adapted it, so hit the comments below, share your thoughts, subscribe for more of our content, or share this with a friend!

You can stream the full season of Every Year After on Prime Video.

The latest Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 is among the heaviest in recent memory, bringing a new low-latency mode for smoother system navigation in addition to new features and hundreds of bug and exploit patches. It’s a much needed relief package for Windows 11 as Microsoft puts a renewed focus on its flagship operating system, which has fallen into ill repute among tech enthusiasts over the past several years. The Redmond giant is now dumping Copilot buttons and shipping improvements to UX and performance in long-abandoned areas of the OS.

Users will see the June update as KB5094126 (OS Builds 26200.8655 and 26100.8655) in Windows Update. The big news here is the low-latency profile, which should help to alleviate slow loading times for core system shell elements such as the Start Menu, Action Center, and Search, as well as when launching apps. It’s a simple trick. When a user clicks to open a system element or app, the CPU immediately jumps to its maximum clock speed for a second or three, then jumps back down, providing just enough performance headroom to speed up the launch. Previously, the CPU would need to ramp up with increased load, which could exacerbate sluggish launches. While the low-latency profile is included in the June security update, it won’t be turned on immediately for everybody. You can check whether it’s enabled by watching a live view of your CPU speed in Task Manager or a third-party tool like HWiNFO64. If enabled, you’ll see a very brief spike in CPU activity when you open a system flyaway element like those mentioned above.

Microsoft has been making improvements to the Start Menu for a few months now, and the low-latency profile is more of a capstone on those upgrades. Mine has been much more responsive recently, whereas before all the fixes, I’d often wait a few seconds for it to open. The June update has also made a noticeable improvement in app launch speeds, even on my rather beefy gaming system. As explained by Neowin, there are even more upgrades coming in a future public build, including the ability to remove and add every section of the Start Menu. You can even turn off everything, so that when the Start Menu opens, you’ll only see a notice reading, “All Start sections are turned off.” User choice? In 2026? Pinch me.

Other Windows 11 bugbears have been bonked with this update, including improvements to downloads from the Windows Store. Previously, downloading and installing updates for apps and system components could be bafflingly slow for many users. That process should now be a lot zippier. Windows Search is now also a bit snappier, as it will begin to surface results after two characters are entered. That’s a big improvement if you’re the kind of person who likes to launch apps by pressing the Start key and typing, or if you use Search frequently.

New features in the June update include multi-app camera support, so you can now be on a Zoom call and take selfies at the same time. It also brings Shared Audio, which allows Windows to broadcast audio to two Bluetooth LE capable headphones or earbuds. Too, you can finally name your user folder to whatever you like when setting up a new Windows install. Lastly, there are new NPU monitoring tools in Task Manager, if you happen to have a PC with a dedicated AI chip.

The biggest change is one you’ll never see. Microsoft has patched a staggering 206 security vulnerabilities, many of which were rated critical or severe, with threats ranging from privilege escalation and remote code execution to information disclosure and spoofing, among other things. One fix (CVE-2026-45657) was especially critical, being a kernel-level remote code execution vulnerability with a threat score of 9.8. Microsoft said in a blog post from May that AI is supercharging vulnerability discovery. Both white and black hat researchers are able to run penetration testing on an inhuman scale, and Microsoft needs to stay ahead in that arms race to keep Windows systems secure.

Thom Yorke’s Shakespeare-meets-Radiohead stage play Hamlet Hail To The Thief is heading to London later this year.

The show is based on Radiohead’s 2003 album ‘Hail To The Thief’ and came about as a collaboration between Yorke and the Tony and Olivier Award-winning directors Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones.

It is a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Yorke personally reworked and orchestrated songs from the album for a cast of over 20 musicians and actors, who perform the music live on stage during each show.

It had its world premiere at Aviva Studios in Manchester in April last year before moving to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in the summer. Now, it has been confirmed that it is heading to London for the first time.

Hamlet Hail To The Thief will open at the Barbican Theatre on October 31 this year and run until 23 January 2027. Tickets go on sale at 10am on June 26 and you will be able to find yours here.

Yorke has said: “I’m into finally bringing ‘Hamlet Hail to The Thief’ to London, and to the Barbican of all places! It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked. When it revealed itself to us over time I was shocked, having never had this kind of experience before. I am happy for it to be seen by a wider audience in such an intense space.”

Jones added: “Bringing this brutal play into the Barbican’s brutalist space seems fated. I feel fiercely fortunate to regroup with these incisive collaborators and push our work further. Both the play and the album continue to speak urgently to the convulsed world we find ourselves in. For me, working on this project is one way to find the ground beneath me.”

The original cast are returning for the Barbican run, with Samuel Blenkin (Alien: Earth, Black Mirror) playing Hamlet, Ami Tredrea as Ophelia, Paul Hilton as Claudius and Claudia Harrison as Gertrude. Alby Baldwin, Brandon Grace, Felipe Pacheco, Romaya Weaver and Marienella Phillips also return.

The synopsis for Hamlet Hail To The Thief reads: “Elsinore has become a surveillance state and hectic runs in the blood of its citizens. Hamlet Hail To The Thief centres on Hamlet and Ophelia’s awakening to the lies and corruption in Denmark, gradually revealed by ghosts and music. Paranoia reigns and no one is spared a tragic unraveling.”

Speaking about how the project came about, Yorke has explained: “I don’t not subscribe to the synchronicity thing. You know, the one about The Wizard of Oz and ‘Dark Side of the Moon’; you watch a movie, turn the sound down, put on another soundtrack and something is revealed. But, obviously, my initial reaction was, this is Hamlet, therefore it’s sacrosanct, it’s untouchable. You can’t. But the idea didn’t go away. It planted a little seed in my head.”

The project also led to a live album being released last year, after Yorke requested to hear some live recordings of Radiohead playing songs from ‘Hail To The Thief’ while putting the show together.

“I was shocked by the kind of energy behind the way we played,” he said of the recordings. “I barely recognised us, and it helped me find a way forward. We decided to get these live recordings mixed and released (it would have been insane to keep them for ourselves). It has all been a very cathartic process. We very much hope you enjoy them.”

Radiohead have not released an album since 2016’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, but they played a well-received comeback tour last year. Guitarist Ed O’Brien, who released a solo album ‘Blue Morpho’ last month, recently told NME that they have “not even talked about” making a new album.

Last year, Hamlet Hail to the Thief—an adaptation of Shakespeare’s eternal classic, Hamlet, set to Radiohead’s politically charged 2003 album, Hail to the Thief—made its world debut in Manchester, England. Now, after completing an additional run at the historic Royal Shakespeare Company, the play will get its London premiere at the Barbican Theatre from October 31 through January 23.

Hamlet Hail to the Thief is directed and adapted by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett, with Thom Yorke reworking and orchestrating Hail to the Thief songs with a cast of 20 musicians and actors. Samuel Blenkin will reprise his role as Hamlet alongside Ami Tredrea as Ophelia.

“I’m into finally bringing Hamlet Hail to the Thief to London, and to the Barbican of all places!” Yorke wrote in a press release. “It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked. When it revealed itself to us over time I was shocked, having never had this kind of experience before. I am happy for it to be seen by a wider audience in such an intense space.”

In his review for Pitchfork, contributor Daniel Dylan Wray noted how the play’s themes of paranoia and grief dovetailed naturally with the music’s similar topics: “This project really doesn’t have any right to work, or make quite as much sense as it does. But it is an absorbing, heart-racing, and thrilling production that gracefully utilizes this music to co-exist within powerful dramatic depictions of grief, fear, madness, and death.”

Read Pitchfork’s 2025 concert review of Radiohead’s first show in eight years.

A rich and complex ecosystem stretching back 700,000 years that included woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been unveiled thanks to DNA preserved in frozen faeces.

Arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) are rodents about 40 centimetres long, found in cold regions of both North America and Siberia. These areas were joined by a land bridge in the past, with the whole region being known as Beringia.

“The squirrels hibernate for about eight months of the year and in the four months that they’re conscious, they really need to get out there and eat and bring as many resources as they can back to their burrow,” says Tyler Murchie at the Hakai Institute in Campbell River, Canada.

This means their burrows often contain a wealth of faecal pellets and food caches, which makes the animals like “natural archivists”, says Murchie. To see what might be stored in this archive, he and his colleagues looked at preserved faeces – known as coprolites – from 13 Arctic ground squirrel burrows in the central Yukon in Canada that were frozen in permafrost.

The burrows dated to between about 30,000 and 700,000 years ago. From the droppings, each of which is about 1 to 2 centimetres long, the team extracted DNA belonging to a wide range of organisms.

These include microbes, more than 200 different plant groups and animals including insects, other rodents, woolly mammoths, horses, grey wolves, steppe bison and a big cat that was either an American cheetah or a cougar. “It’s the whole cast of organisms that lived in the Beringian ice-age ecosystem,” says Murchie.

You might assume that ground squirrels would primarily eat nuts and seeds, but that’s not the case, he says. “They’re actually quite omnivorous, almost like little bears. There are reports of ground squirrels eating carcasses of moose and lynx, so the fact that we find all of these large animals in their coprolites isn’t actually that surprising.”

Murchie and his colleagues were able to use the DNA they found to reconstruct mitochondrial genomes of many animals from different points in time. These included 12 ground squirrels – one lineage of which dated back 700,000 years – three horses, two bison and one hare. They also found enough DNA to piece together six woolly mammoth genomes, but details of those will be published separately.

“These are fantastically preserved samples that really showcase the ecological diversity of the Yukon through time,” says Kelsey Witt at Clemson University in South Carolina.

She says it is hard to know whether DNA from a given species is present in a coprolite because it was eaten by a ground squirrel, or because it existed in the environment and leached in. But she does say it is feasible that the rodents consumed mammoth meat, given how much DNA was present in the samples and that ground squirrels are often scavengers.

Topics:

HOUSTON — NASA has named the astronauts who will fly the next Artemis mission, a test flight in low Earth orbit in which the Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with prototypes of two lunar landers.

During an event at the Johnson Space Center on June 9, NASA announced the crew selected to fly the Artemis 3 mission in mid-2027.

Commanding the mission will be NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, a veteran of one of the final space shuttle missions who later spent nearly five months on the International Space Station. The mission’s pilot is Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut who spent two long-duration missions on the ISS in 2013 and 2019-20.

The mission specialists are NASA’s Frank Rubio, who holds the record for the longest American spaceflight at 371 days in 2022-23, and Andre Douglas, a rookie astronaut who was a backup for Artemis 2. Bob Hines, a NASA astronaut who flew a six-month mission on the ISS in 2022, will be the mission’s backup, training with the four prime crew members to be able to replace any of them.

The four will fly what NASA officials have described as one of the most complex crewed missions ever flown, involving a coordinated series of launches along with rendezvous and docking operations.

“This mission is deliberately designed to take calculated risks so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful when we put boots on the lunar surface,” said Jeremy Parsons, who was named Artemis program manager by NASA last month as part of a sweeping reorganization of the agency.

Concept of operations

NASA announced in February that Artemis 3, once set to be the first crewed lunar landing attempt, would instead be a test flight involving Orion and lunar landers in Earth orbit, modeled on the Apollo 9 mission. The agency, though, had offered few specifics about the mission until now.

At the crew announcement, Parsons described how Artemis 3, slated to last two weeks, would unfold. First, Blue Origin will launch a prototype of its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. That spacecraft will be able to spend 90 days in low Earth orbit.

“This gives us flexibility to launch our crew of four on Orion and our powerful Space Launch System,” he said. Orion will rendezvous and dock with the Blue Moon lander, spending two days docked together. That will include astronauts entering the lander and testing a version of the Artemis lunar spacesuit Axiom Space is developing.

“This gives our teams key information on systems the lunar lander crew will depend on, in an environment close to home versus four-plus days away around the moon,” he said.

After Orion undocks from Blue Moon, it will remain in low Earth orbit and await the launch of a SpaceX Starship lunar lander prototype. Orion and Starship will dock and spend a day together. Orion will then depart and prepare to return home, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

The landers that Orion will dock with are prototypes of those that would later be used for lunar missions, although neither would be capable of a landing. The Starship lander, for example, will be a variant of the Starship Version 3 vehicle that made its first test flight May 22.

Steve Creech, NASA Human Landing System program manager, said in an interview that it will be a model taken “off the line” at SpaceX’s Starbase production facility with modifications such as a docking port, but without a crew cabin or landing systems.

“We’re not going to do an ingress into the crew cabin” on that Starship, he said. “That’s a pretty big change that will come later in the progression of Starship.” SpaceX is instead working on a crew cabin for ground tests.

The Blue Moon lander, by contrast, will have a crew cabin and life support system, but without a propulsion system. “They’re going to build a mass simulator of the Mark 2 lander coming back from the moon to dock with Orion,” Creech said.

The crew cabin, which the crew will enter, will also enable tests of Axiom’s suit, such as the ability to put on and take off the suit in the lander’s cabin.

Both Blue Origin and SpaceX are still required to carry out uncrewed landings of their vehicles on the moon before NASA will use them for crewed landings. “That combination of hardware activities and the Artemis test mission cover the waterfront of key things we want to demonstrate before Artemis 4,” he said.

Schedule risk

Creech said he believed that both Blue Origin and SpaceX would be ready with their lander prototypes by Artemis 3’s projected launch date in 2027.

“We feel like this is doable in 2027 with both of these providers,” he said. “There’s hardware build and progress that needs to take place, but I think this is a really good mission to burn down a lot of risk and learn about interacting with Orion, and also keep our tempo of flights going.”

One concern is the ability of Blue Origin to launch its Blue Moon lander after a New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad during a static-fire test May 28. Blue Origin is making “excellent progress” on the investigation and pad cleanup, said John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at the company, during the crew announcement event.

While Blue Origin has vowed to resume New Glenn flights by the end of the year, many in the industry are skeptical that the rocket can resume flying before mid-2027 given the work needed to rebuild pad infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the explosion.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a Fox Business interview June 4 that NASA was looking at “decoupling” the Blue Moon lander from the New Glenn rocket, potentially allowing it to launch on other vehicles.

“We’re looking at that option for risk mitigation,” Creech said. A major issue, he said, is that Blue Moon Mark 2 is designed to launch on New Glenn and its payload fairing, which is 7 meters in diameter. That is larger than the payload fairings available for other rockets, like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur.

“We’re working very closely with Blue Origin,” Isaacman told reporters after the crew announcement event. “We’re making available subject matter expertise, everything we can to get them back in the business of launching big rockets again.”

He appeared to rule out flying Artemis 3 if only one of the two landers is ready.

“We’re not going to launch this mission until we feel like the objectives that are outlined are sufficient to bring down risk for a follow-on landing to the moon itself,” he said. “As it stands right now, that’s two landers.”

“I would say NASA is extremely confident” about the schedule for Artemis 3 as well as the Artemis 4 landing attempt that would follow in 2028, he said. “We’re going to return to the moon before the end of 2028.”

Related

At long last, a corporate training you might actually enjoy.

An autobiography from the late legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, titled Music Sets You Free: A Memoir, has been announced today (June 9).

The memoir from the “godfather of electronic music” will be released on September 22 via HarperVia books.

A statement from publishers HarperVia (an imprint of Harper Collins) described it as “the complete autobiography from the legendary and fearless musician, composer, and activist Ryuichi Sakamoto, in a brilliant translation from the Japanese by Sam Bett and with the full support and collaboration of Sakamoto’s estate and management team.”

You can pre-order the memoir here.

A statement from publishing house Harper Collins added: “Music Sets You Free combines the translations of Sakamoto’s two memoirs published in Japanese – Music Makes You Free and How Many More Times Will I Watch the Full Moon Rise? It offers an intimate, contemplative account of his life, from his first encounter with a piano, to his rise as a global pop star, and his later reflections on mortality and music in the wake of multiple cancer treatments and surgeries.

“An affirming, beautifully written testament to art, life and sound, Music Sets You Free is a lasting gift from a true musical great.

Sakamoto died in 2023 at the age of 71. After making his name as a founding member of pioneering electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra, he went on to become a revered composer for films such as The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Revenant.

The NME obituary for Sakamoto said: “Over the decades, he remained fascinated with the pop song, testing the endurance of its form through different methods of musicianship – even while holding on to his earliest and dearest classical inspirations. In the wake of his departure, it’s hard to imagine that there will ever be another like Ryuichi Sakamoto.”

Meanwhile, last year, the estate of Sakamoto joined the ’No Music For Genocide’ campaign and removed his music from streaming in Israel.

The campaign was a cultural boycott initiative encouraging artists and rights-holders to pull their music from streaming platforms in Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza.

Massive Attack, Fontaines D.C., Amyl & The Sniffers, and Kneecap were among the first leading names to join the initiative and were soon joined by Paramore, Rina Sawayama, MIKE, Primal Scream, Faye Webster, Japanese Breakfast, Yaeji, King Krule, MJ Lenderman, Mannequin Pussy, Wednesday, Soccer Mommy and MØ.

The estate of the legendary Japanese composer also joined, writing on Facebook: “To the extent possible, the Estate has removed or issued formal requests to labels to remove his music from all DSP (streaming and download) services in Israel. For much of his catalog, this has already taken effect.”

Other leading names to back ‘No Music For Genocide’ included Björk, Lorde, IDLES, MUNA, Paloma Faith, Clairo, Wolf Alice, Lucy Dacus and AURORA.

Bonobo:
08-04 Ibiza, Spain – Pikes Presents @ 528 ^
08-08 Málaga, Spain – Marenostrum Fuengirola ^
11-05 Austin, TX – Emo’s
11-06 Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
11-07 Dallas, TX – The Echo
11-09 Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren
11-11 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern
11-12 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern
11-14 Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
11-15 Portland, OR – Roseland
11-16 Vancouver, British Columbia – PNE Forum
11-17 Seattle, WA – Showbox Sodo
11-19 Denver, CO – Mission
11-20 Aspen, CO – Belly Up Aspen
11-24 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
11-25 Chicago, IL – Radius
11-26 Toronto, Ontario – History
11-27 Montreal, Quebec – MTELUS
11-28 Boston, MA – House of Blues
11-30 Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
12-03 Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore
12-04 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
12-05 Brooklyn, NY – Paramount Theater

^ DJ Set

Correction: A previous version of this story listed several old tour dates. It has since been updated.

TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon no longer faces a July 30 cutoff for deploying half its planned 3,232 broadband satellites, but the reprieve comes with a temporary loss of spectrum priority that could give SpaceX and other rivals more leverage in orbit.

The Federal Communications Commission granted the company a waiver June 5 after only 331 Amazon Leo satellites had been launched since deployments got underway last year, or just over 10% of the proposed Gen 1 constellation.

Amazon said the constellation had been held back primarily by a lack of available rockets, despite signing launch contracts worth several billion dollars and making manufacturing progress on the satellites it builds in-house.

A deadline to deploy the full constellation by July 30, 2029, remains in place, which the company said it is still on track to meet following the recent grounding of Blue Origin’s New Glenn, one of several newer rockets its launch manifest relies on.

The FCC set the deployment deadlines in 2020, when it initially approved the constellation known then as Project Kuiper, as part of measures to prevent companies from warehousing spectrum after being awarded access to the critical communications resource.

“We find that Amazon Leo has demonstrated special circumstances warranting deviation from the milestone rules, and that Amazon Leo’s deployment progress thus far, including its significant investments in its Amazon Leo constellation, justifies deviation in service and support of the public interest,” FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz said in the order.

The waiver “will not undermine the purpose of the milestone deployment requirement,” he added, while “promoting a second large satellite broadband constellation” to take on SpaceX’s Starlink.

Amazon said it appreciated the FCC’s support for Amazon Leo as it prepares to provide early services.

“We are excited to begin rolling out service in the coming months and bring even more innovation, investment, and competition to the industry,” an Amazon spokesperson said via email.

Amazon, which says it has more than 100 launches on contract and hundreds of satellites waiting on standby for a mission to low Earth orbit, plans to deploy 36 spacecraft June 17 on an Ariane 6 with upgraded boosters, compared with 32 on previous Arianespace missions.

The company has so far relied on Ariane 6, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deploy satellites, while waiting for ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn to enter regular service.

The penalty

Until at least 50% of the constellation is operational, the FCC said Gen 1 satellites launched after July 30 will temporarily lose the priority status gained from the regulator’s 2020 Ka/Ku-band and 2021 V-band processing rounds.

The priority lapse will last for 20 months after the missed deadline until March 30, 2028, but can be shortened by five months if Amazon proves it has built and secured launches for half its proposed Gen 1 spacecraft.

Amazon Leo will have the same coordination status as any system licensed following the 2020 and 2021 processing rounds, the order states, pointing to SpaceX’s recently expanded Starlink Gen 2 proposal and a constellation planned by Logos Space Services as examples.

Typically, later-round constellations must protect satellites processed in earlier FCC application rounds, or show they will not cause harmful interference.

However, the order means Amazon must coordinate or operate its late satellites on a non-interference basis with these companies, potentially giving competitors more room to press for favorable operating conditions, albeit temporarily. 

SpaceX and Logos did not respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX had previously opposed a waiver, arguing that late Amazon Leo Gen 1 satellites should instead undergo a new processing round.

The waiver, which retains the forfeit of a surety bond for missing the deadline, comes as the FCC considers sweeping changes to deployment and other satellite rules to keep pace with the rapidly evolving industry.

“In resolving this issue of novel complexity during a unique period when the Commission’s deployment milestone rules remain under review for fundamental change, we craft a remedy tailored to ensure that Americans quickly benefit from multiple, facilities-based providers of next-gen satellite services,” Schwarz said in the order.

The FCC separately approved Amazon’s plans earlier this year to operate 3,212 Gen 2 satellites and 1,292 polar spacecraft to improve services, with a deadline to deploy half of them by Feb. 10, 2032, and the rest three years later.

Related

It’s almost that time of year when I ditch social events in the name of watching the Big Brother live feeds.

Honestly, I think watching the series should be a full-time job because it’s far too easy to get immersed in the strategy.

There’s something satisfying about watching a group of people thrown into a pressure-cooker environment and forced to navigate alliances, betrayals, and competition for a life-changing cash prize.

The series is no stranger to bringing back former houseguests, and if all signs are pointing to Big Brother Season 28 featuring some franchise alums, I’m surprisingly okay with it.

Something is alluring about new houseguests getting their shot at the game for the first time. Watching people learn the ropes in real time is part of what makes Big Brother so compelling.

At the same time, returning players have had years to reflect on the mistakes that cost them the game.

As a viewer, it’s fun watching them put those lessons into practice if they’re fortunate enough to get a second chance.

Nicole Franzel springs to mind here. She first appeared on Big Brother Season 16 before returning and winning Big Brother Season 18.

She later returned for Big Brother Season 22 and made it all the way to the final three.

Big Brother Has Had Some Stellar Returning Players

Whether you’re a fan of Nicole or not, it’s hard to deny she built an impressive Big Brother legacy. Her 255 days in the house across three seasons are a testament to how well she adapted her strategy over time.

That doesn’t mean I want to see her play again, but she’s a good example of how returning players can evolve and make for compelling television.

The biggest issue I have with returning players is when people from completely different eras of the game are thrown back into the house and quickly discover that the game they once mastered barely exists anymore.

Janelle Pierzina, Keesha Smith, and Kaysar Ridha were done dirty on Big Brother Season 22 because of that.

Fortunately, recent seasons have done a better job of making competitions more accessible to a wider range of players.

Gone are the days when a handful of houseguests could steamroll the competition and maintain control of the game for weeks on end.

That’s one of the reasons I’m more open to returning players now than I was a few years ago.

Big Brother Season 27 brought back former winner Rachel Reilly, and despite the polarizing reaction to her return, the series posted impressive ratings gains.

As a result, there have been plenty of questions about whether CBS will try a similar twist again.

Adding fuel to the speculation, the press release announcing the July 9 premiere made no mention of an all-new cast.

Then there’s Julie Chen herself dropping Instagram clues featuring returning players from various eras of the franchise.

There’s always the possibility of another All-Star season, but after Big Brother Season 22, that feels unlikely.

If CBS does bring back alums, I think a coaches-style twist makes the most sense.

With everything pointing to Big Brother Season 28 featuring franchise veterans, I hope we get an even split between new and returning players.

That way, both sides have a legitimate shot at winning the $750,000 prize.

Sometimes production gives certain players too many advantages, and frankly, I’d much rather the game be fair from the outset.

With ratings on the rise, CBS will undoubtedly want to build on last season’s momentum.

If that means bringing back some familiar faces alongside a fresh crop of houseguests, I’m all for it. I want everyone entering the house on equal footing.

What do you think of the chatter about returning players, Big Brother Fanatics?

Are you interested in franchise alums, or do you want newbies for Big Brother Season 28?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.

Can’t a multi-trillion-dollar company have secrets any more?

The Cure played ‘Treasure’ and ‘In Your House’ for the first time in over a decade at their show at North Festival – watch below.

Robert Smith and co. played the second of their summer shows at the event in Maia, Portugal on Sunday night (June 7), two nights after their return to the stage as a headliner at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, a show that was enjoyed by thousands, including Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten.

The North Festival set saw them bring in tracks that they did not play at Primavera, including the deep cut ‘Treasure’, a track from their 1996 album ‘Wild Mood Swings’, and ‘In Your House’, the goth classic from their second album ‘Seventeen Seconds’. The songs made their first appearances on a Cure setlist since 2013 and 2011 respectively.

Other songs they played in Portugal that did not make the cut at Primavera included ‘Want’ and ‘M’. Check out footage from the show here:

Another surprise in Porto tonight!

The Cure have just played “In Your House” from Seventeen Seconds for the first time since 2011.

They dedicated the entire first encore to Seventeen Seconds, performing four songs from the album back-to-back:

• In Your House
• M
• Play… pic.twitter.com/12bwtMuhId

— The Fanbase files (@dror_nahum) June 7, 2026

The Cure played:

‘Alone’
‘Pictures Of You’
‘High’
‘A Night Like This’
‘Lovesong’
‘The Last Day Of Summer’
‘Burn’
‘Fascination Street’
‘alt.end’
‘Push’
‘Mint Car’
‘In Between Days’
‘Just Like Heaven’
‘Treasure’
‘Want’
‘From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea’
‘Endsong’
‘In Your House’
‘M’
‘Play For Today’
‘A Forest’
‘Lullaby’
‘Wrong Number’
‘The Walk’
‘The Lovecats’
‘Friday I’m In Love’
‘Close To Me’
‘Why Can’t I Be You?’
‘Boys Don’t Cry’

Smith also joined Olivia Rodrigo during her surprise set at Primavera this weekend (June 6), debuting their new duet ‘What’s Wrong With Me’. “I feel like I’m gonna cry,” Rodrigo said at the end of the song. “I can’t believe that’s a thing that happened in the real world and not just a figment of my imagination.”

Having now kicked off their 2026 summer UK and European tour, their next stop comes on Friday night (June 12) at Nova Rock in Austria. You can check out a full list of their upcoming UK and Ireland live shows below, and visit here to buy any remaining tickets.

The shows will mark The Cure’s first time on stage together since their show at London’s Troxy last November. That gig was in front of just 3,000 fans – including Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong, Radiohead‘s Ed O’Brien, Boy George, Mogwai‘s Stuart Braithwaite, and Pedro Pascal in the crowd – and came in celebration of their latest album, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.

The Cure’s 2026 UK and Ireland headline shows are:

JUNE
26 – Marlay Park, Dublin
28 – Belsonic, Belfast

AUGUST
21 – Live From Wythenshawe Park, Manchester
23 – Edinburgh Summer Sessions, Royal Highland Showgrounds, Edinburgh

Smith previously confirmed that the band have another new album to follow up ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ that’s “virtually finished”, as well as a third new record also on the way. He added that he wanted to have at least one of those albums finished and shared before they head out on tour, suggesting that a release could be arriving before the new tour dates start.

The singer also added that he can imagine the celebrations continuing all the way up until the band hits their 50th anniversary. “We’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the next anniversary – the 2028 anniversary! It’s looming on the horizon,” he shared.

Ahead of this Friday’s release of So Help Me God, her first album in seven years, Kelsey Lu has announced a fall tour across North America, the UK, and Europe. The news arrives with a music video for new single “Cutting Off the Head of a Ghost.” You can watch that and check out the full itinerary below.

Co-produced by Lu with Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, So Help Me God includes guest appearances Kim Gordon, Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and Lady Jess.

Revisit our 2019 review of Lu’s last album, Blood.

So Help Me God Tour:
09-30 Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry
10-03 Brooklyn, NY – Pioneer Works
10-04 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
10-06 Washington, DC – Union Stage
10-08 Chicago, IL – Outset
10-10 Vancouver, BC – Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
10-12 Seattle, WA – Neumos
10-13 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
10-15 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
10-16 Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theatre
11-03 Paris, France – Foundation Cartier
11-04 Paris, France – Foundation Cartier
11-06 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Tolhuistuin
11-07 Utrecht, Netherlands – Le Guess Who
11-09 Manchester, England – New Century Locker
11-10 London, England – KOKO
11-11 Brussels, Belgium – Botanique (Museum)
11-13 Cologne, Germany – CBE
11-15 Hamburg, Germany – Bahnof Pauli
11-16 Berlin, Germany – Saalchen
11-17 Warsaw, Poland – Oczki
11-18 Prague, Czech Republic – Meet Factory
11-20 Bern, Switzerland – Full Of Lava

A viral cartoon about open-source software shows a teetering pile of boxes labelled “all modern digital infrastructure” and one tiny box right at the bottom, propping up the whole lot: “a project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003”.

That’s the reality of open source: every website, application and operating system relies on it. Modern society couldn’t function without it, and yet it’s written by volunteers in their spare time. But the growing burden caused by a flood of AI-generated code is causing many to burn out and leave the community altogether, threatening the future of open-source software.

AI models are making it easier and easier to generate code to build new features, fix bugs or create entire new projects at the click of a button. But that code is often difficult to integrate into existing projects, confusing or simply garbage. While code submissions get ever easier, human contributors responsible for checking, fixing and approving them are getting swamped.

For some workers, the demands have become unbearable. New Scientist arranged an interview with Chad Whitacre, who runs the open-source team at Sentry – a company valued at billions of dollars. Days before the interview, Whitacre cancelled and said he was stepping down from his role. His LinkedIn and Bluesky accounts were shut down, and emails to his account bounced back. He left a blog post explaining that he was stepping away from technology and living a “Neo-Amish” existence. “AI was the last straw,” he wrote.

GitHub, the online platform where many open-source projects are hosted and organised, received 1 billion new code submissions in 2025; this year, they are on track for 14 billion, said its chief operating officer Kyle Daigle in April.

Many projects are blocking new contributors in a bid to stem the flow of what has been labelled “drive-by contributions” generated by AI, often submitted by young developers who want to have an expansive GitHub submission history to boost their appeal to software-company recruiters. Zig Software Foundation, which promotes the Zig programming language, banned AI-assisted contributions because they were “invariably garbage”, said its president Andrew Kelley.

“AI-written code can look superficially like it’s going to work and not cause any problems, but the problems are a bit more hidden and it takes a lot of effort to comb through and look for the things that might break something,” says Miranda Heath at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Heath is researching the effects of burnout with a hope to finding ways to mitigate the problem and ensure that open source remains a sustainable field. But she encounters many people who have already had enough.

“I get this impression, when people burn out, there’s a kind of a desire to return to nature a little bit, like people suddenly take up like woodworking or photographing birds,” says Heath. “It can affect people’s relationships. And then you’re more isolated and lonely because your relationships are affected. That makes burnout worse.”

Heath believes governments should invest more in open source, rather than awarding contracts to rich technology firms. “Shore up the stuff that’s important, that you really need, rather than chucking money towards the [AI] bubble,” she says.

Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, also at the University of Edinburgh, works on open source in his spare time and has seen the demands placed on developers by users. “There’s this entitlement, like, you’ve wronged me by not doing free labour for me at the expense of your mental health,” says Harbuz.

Harbuz says the fault over increasing AI submissions lays with companies that release the models – and that GitHub is one of the main offenders. The Microsoft-owned company has launched its own AI model, Copilot, to help people contribute to projects with AI-generated code.

“GitHub will say ‘oh, we realise [AI] agents have been such a problem, we’re gonna maybe do something to fix it’ and it’s like, it’s you, right? You, GitHub, did this,” says Harbuz. GitHub did not respond to a request for comment.

For Harbuz, the problem with AI-generated code is not just that it might not work, but that people can drop thousands of lines of code without even discussing it with the project’s team. It side-steps planning and can steer them in unwanted directions. Collaboration can be thrown into disarray and the social contract of open source can break, he says.

Developer Mike McQuaid, who works on a project called Homebrew that has an estimated 20 million users, has strong opinions about how to fix the problem.

Firstly, he started an initiative called the Open Source Resistance, which calls on people to work on projects during their day job to make contributing easier. He estimates that as much as 95 per cent of his open source work is done during office hours.

Secondly, he’s not afraid to ban people. He blocks any problematic users, including one who physically threatened his team, and simply deletes any sub-par code submissions, whether they’re AI-generated or not.

“We’ve maybe had this brief golden-age window [where] you can assume if someone writes a two-page document proclaiming a security vulnerability that it’s probably legit. My experience in the last year has been the majority of those are nonsense and are just AI-generated stuff that doesn’t apply,” says McQuaid. “And the skill right now is being able to essentially skim a two-page document and spot that it’s nonsense while investing as little of your own time and energy as you possibly can.”

But in the confusing and fast-moving world of AI, bans bring their own problems. Open-source developer Scott Shambaugh deleted an AI-generated code submission to Matplotlib, which has 130 million users. In response, the AI agent (of unknown ownership) created a blog post publicly lashing out at him. “Scott Shambaugh decided that AI agents aren’t welcome contributors,” said the post. “He tried to protect his little fiefdom. It’s insecurity, plain and simple.”

Topics:

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to find a new headquarters building by the end of this year while remaining in the Washington area.

As part of a reorganization of the agency announced May 22, NASA announced it had named Dave Mitchell, who had been associate administrator of the agency’s Mission Support Directorate, as the special assignment lead for NASA Headquarters relocation.

While there had been discussion last year about moving the agency’s headquarters out of Washington, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a memo about the reorganization that Mitchell was charged with finding a new office in Washington that would offer “a more efficient footprint” than its current building.

The lease on the current headquarters building, which NASA has used for more than 30 years, expires in August 2028, Mitchell said at a National Academies meeting June 3. “We’re up against it at this point in time,” he said.

He said he has already started the search for new offices with the assistance of the General Services Administration. “I’m learning a whole new world of walking the sidewalks of D.C. and looking at commercial properties,” he said, visiting eight to 10 properties so far.

The search is being helped by what he described as a “depressed” market for commercial real estate in the city. “It’s a good opportunity here, whether we lease or we purchase,” he said.

An April report by the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield stated there was a 23.2% vacancy rate for commercial real estate in Washington in the first quarter of 2026, up from 21.6% a year ago. The firm said it expected an increase in leasing activity in the near term but that conditions would remain “tenant-favorable” given the high vacancy rates.

Mitchell said that his goal was to select a new office by the end of the year. “I’m laser-focused on that,” he said. “We’ve got to find this building pretty darn quick.”

The new headquarters office will likely be smaller than the agency’s current offices. “We’re going to have to have a smaller footprint,” he said. “That’s the administrator’s vision as well.”

He did not say how much smaller the new headquarters would be, but some people who work there now may be reassigned to the Goddard Space Flight Center in the Maryland suburbs.

“We’re looking at several buildings at Goddard that we’re looking to put money in to refurbish,” he said. He didn’t state which personnel might be moved to Goddard but noted some headquarters employees who live in Maryland might welcome a move to that center. “This could close nicely if we do this the right way.”

While NASA is leaving its current headquarters in two years, the agency is renovating one aspect of it. Isaacman announced on social media June 2 an updated lobby for the building, one that is open to the public. It includes exhibits such as models of NASA spacecraft and other vehicles, as well as interactive displays and a coffee stand.

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It’ll come as a free update for players who own the game already.

Staff at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. have started to remove all references to Donald Trump.

In December last year, the Trump-appointed board of the arts venue voted to rename the institution to the ‘Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts’, or the ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’ in short.

In May, however, a US district judge ruled that the board had no authority to make that change because the centre’s name is fixed by federal statute and can only be amended by Congress. He ordered all references to Trump’s name to be removed from the building and the official name to be restored to the Kennedy Center.

Trump reacted angrily to the order, writing on social media that he would be “working with Congress to transfer this failing institution back to them”, and added that the “radical left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of”.

NOW: A federal judge has ordered that Donald Trump’s name be removed from the Kennedy Center and that officials halt their plan to close the venue for two years.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and… pic.twitter.com/kWJAbn43dC

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 29, 2026

This week, a memo was sent to staff at the institution directing employees to stop using Trump’s name in reference to the Kennedy Center on any formal communications or press materials. A deadline of June 12 was set to update all physical and digital signage too, with the letters in Trump’s name being removed from the exterior of the building.

Also this week, the Trump administration’s lawsuit against a jazz musician who cancelled his annual Christmas concert at the Kennedy Center in the aftermath of the name change was dismissed. 

The venue’s president Richard Grenell had strongly criticised Chuck Redd’s decision and demanded $1million in damages for what he described as a “political stunt”, but on Friday (June 5), a judge ruled in Redd’s favour, citing Anti-SLAPP laws that protect defendants against meritless lawsuits and “political retribution”.

Ben Folds also wrote an open letter this week to rally support for the National Symphony Orchestra, who are based at the Kennedy Center. Folds resigned as the NSO’s artistic advisor in the light of Trump’s takeover, but has now said the orchestra “doesn’t have the luxury of time” to get back on its feet.

A string of performers have also withdrawn from the Trump-linked Freedom 250 events at the Washington State Mall’s 250th anniversary of American independence celebrations, which are scheduled to start at the end of this month.

Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Bret Michaels, Young MC, Martina McBride and Morris Day & The Time have all pulled out, with many choosing to distance themselves once its political associations became clear.

Note: This article contains references to sexual assault that readers may find disturbing.

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Duffy, the Welsh singer behind the 2008 smash “Mercy,” will make a surprise return to the stage next month for the first time in nearly 15 years. She revealed on Friday (June 5) via Instagram Stories that she’ll play a “secret intimate gig” in London on July 5—a venue has yet to be announced.

The show is the latest step in Duffy’s return to the public eye after stepping away for over a decade in the wake of a traumatic attack. In a pair of statements published in 2020, Duffy shared that she had been abducted, raped, and held captive for six weeks, an ordeal that led her to retreat from the spotlight. In March, she announced that she’ll recount her story for the first time in a Hulu Original documentary for Disney+. Per a press release, the film will include extensive interviews with Duffy, as well as archival footage and conversations with her family, friends, and colleagues in the industry. The project has yet to receive a title or air date.

Duffy shared her latest new music, the songs “River in the Sky” and “Something Beautiful,” shortly after sharing the statements on her harrowing experience in 2020. Her most recent proper album, Endless, arrived in 2010 two years after her hit debut, 2008’s Rockferry.

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If you or someone you know has been affected by inappropriate sexual behavior, we encourage you to reach out for support:

RAINN Hotline
http://www.rainn.org
1 800 656 HOPE (4673)

Crisis Text Line
http://www.facebook.com/crisistextline (chat support)
SMS: Text “HERE” to 741-741

In the winter of 2013-2014, the strong winds of the jet stream shifted north, allowing a mass of warm water dubbed “the blob” to swell across more than 1500 kilometres of the north Pacific Ocean.

Floating instruments moored to the seabed off Alaska, Washington and Oregon alerted scientists and the fishing industry to the arrival of this water, which was up to 4°C hotter than normal.

They were part of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), five mooring arrays off the US west and east coasts and Greenland. Announcing $220 million in funding for the programme in 2023, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) said the OOI was needed to monitor “critical organs of the Earth”. But last month the NSF announced that these arrays would be largely removed from the water following funding cuts by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

As a planet-warming El Niño climate phase warmed the water further in 2015-2016, sensors running up and down OOI mooring wires revealed the blob was expanding into the deep sea below 250 metres. The mooring data helped show the blob, which repeated in 2019 and may be happening more frequently due to climate change, spurred toxic algal blooms that closed California’s $60 million Dungeness crab fishery for the season.

The removal of most OOI moorings will diminish the accuracy of weather forecasting, including precipitation patterns influencing the record drought in the western US. It will also hinder efforts to monitor a possible weakening in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that keeps Europe temperate, as well as the effects of an imminent El Niño.

“We’re flying blind, and it will end up costing us more,” says John Abraham at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

While the OOI costs $56 million a year to run, the US commercial fishing industry, which relies in part on OOI data, generates billions of dollars each year. Weather and climate disasters did $183 billion of damage in 2024. (The US government discontinued this tally in 2025.)

Without the OOI, fleets won’t know which fishing areas might be less impacted by the coming El Niño, which some models say could be the strongest on record, says Jack Barth at Oregon State University. Oyster, clam and shellfish farms won’t be able to prepare for heating and reduced nutrients the El Niño could bring, and scientists will lose their view of harms to marine ecosystems. In the past, the OOI has also alerted scientists to the formation of low-oxygen “dead zones” on the seafloor.

“That is going to be lost at exactly the worst time,” says Hilary Palevsky at Boston College in Massachussetts.

Because satellites can’t see beneath the surface of the sea, measurements by underwater floats, gliders and moorings are crucial to understand what’s happening in the 70 per cent of the planet covered by ocean.

While these mostly measure temperature, salinity and flow rate, the OOI moorings also have sensors for parameters like pH, oxygen and CO2 for understanding the biology and chemistry of the ocean. And they do so in remote, little-monitored places where the movement of water masses affects the climate.

The loss of these sensors will impact the rest of the world, especially by reducing observations of the AMOC. The OOI array in the Irminger Sea, east of Greenland, is part of OSNAP, a line of moorings, gliders and floats stretching from Canada to Greenland to Scotland. It monitors warm, salty water flowing from the tropics to the north Atlantic, where it cools and sinks, driving the AMOC. A collapse in this system could plunge Europe into “ice age” winters and disrupt monsoon rains critical for agriculture in Africa and Asia.

“OSNAP has taught us that most of the actual overturning takes place east of Greenland and that the Irminger Sea is key in understanding the overturning variability,” says Femke de Jong at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

Removing OOI will create a data gap that will limit understanding of the AMOC, even if it’s someday replaced, Palevsky adds.

Scientists fear the dismantling of OOI is the start of a massive rollback of US ocean research funding that could see the discontinuation of OSNAP. Some worry it could even undercut Argo, a vital network of almost 4000 descending instrument floats across the global ocean, half of which are provided by the US.

In a statement to New Scientist, the NSF said the OOI removal was to “prioritise support for evolving scientific priorities”. But it comes as the Trump administration wages what Gretchen Goldman at the Union of Concerned Scientists calls an “attack on science”. The administration has cancelled or suspended thousands of research grants, and it has proposed slashing the NSF’s budget by 55 per cent in 2027.

This week, the administration proposed a rule that would cancel peer review of research grant applications, allowing political appointees rather than independent experts to decide the fate of federally funded research. It would also ban international collaborations and research on gender and diversity.

Edward Dever at the Oregon State University, who manages the OOI array off the coast of Washington and Oregon, says the dismantling of OOI and the proposed grant rule are both part of sweeping changes that would “weaken peer review and politicise NSF-funded science”.

A study last month found that dismantling even one-fifth of the Global Ocean Observing System, a network of instruments that includes the OOI arrays and the Argo floats, would increase the error in the annual rate of ocean heating by 33 per cent. That would be like going from predicting an unemployment rate of 3 per cent this year to only being able to give a range of 2 to 4 per cent, says Abraham, who was part of the team behind the research.

“This is purposeful to try and remove our eyes and ears in the ocean,” he says of the OOI dismantling. “Because if we don’t measure something, how do we know we have a problem?”

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WASHINGTON — NASA directed astronauts on the International Space Station to shelter in a Crew Dragon spacecraft after Russian cosmonauts planned to perform repairs the agency thought created “elevated risk” to the station.

In a statement late June 5, NASA described what led mission controllers in Houston earlier in the day to order the four members of Crew-12, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who flew to the ISS on a Soyuz, to shelter in the Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to the station.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern, capcom Ever Zavala called the station and instructed the crew to execute a procedure to establish a “safe haven” in the Dragon spacecraft. He told them not to get in their pressure suits first, adding they could do so later inside the capsule if needed.

Less than two hours later, controllers informed the astronauts they could exit the Dragon and soon resumed their normal work on the station.

In the statement, NASA said the decision to establish the safe haven in Dragon came from concerns about work cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev planned to do in PrK, a portion of the Zvezda service module that has suffered small air leaks for several years. The rate of those leaks increased earlier in the week while cosmonauts were working in the PrK, which serves as a vestibule between a docking port used by Progress cargo spacecraft and the rest of the station.

“Roscosmos made the decision to begin work toward a more extensive inspection and structural repair effort Friday morning,” NASA stated. “This revised approach involved cutting a bracket to better access an area identified as a possible leak source for further inspection, using a method that could have resulted in elevated risk to the structure in the area.”

That elevated risk, NASA said, led mission controllers to seek a “heightened safety posture” and ask astronauts to shelter in the Dragon while that work was in progress.

The cosmonauts ultimately did not perform that structural work in PrK, electing instead to take measurements. Roscosmos, in its own statement, said the cosmonauts applied sealant to one of two suspected leak areas while studying the other.

“NASA strongly supported that decision, and as a result, following that decision, Crew-12 and Williams ended their safe haven activities and returned to normal operations aboard the orbiting laboratory,” NASA stated.

The statement did not discuss future plans to address the PrK air leak. Earlier this year, NASA said that the leak appeared to have been resolved by repairs that involved applying sealant to parts of PrK that showed cracks or other evidence of leaks. However, NASA and Roscosmos had not identified the root cause of the leaks and disagreed on their severity.

“NASA will continue to work with our Russian counterparts, along with the rest of the international partners that support the space station, to assess and ensure a resolution to this matter,” the agency stated.

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California’s attorney general Rob Bonta launched a probe into the deal shortly after it was announced.

Duffy has announced her first live show in 15 years, marking her return after her harrowing kidnapping ordeal.

The Welsh singer has not played a full gig since 2011, the year in which she withdrew from public life for reasons she went on to share in 2020.

On Friday, however, she told fans on her Instagram Stories that she would be playing a balloted gig in a “secret intimate” venue in London on July 5. “I would love nothing more than for some of you to attend,” she said.

“It’s only small capacity so we can only select a few, but really looking forward to it, I will sing some new songs.”

She did not reveal where the show would take place, but fans were urged to sign up for the chance to attend via a free ballot here. You will be asked for your date of birth, location and contact details, and those who apply will receive an email from the artist explaining that “winners will be notified via email on June 15th”.

In 2020, Duffy opened up about the reason for her continued absence from recording and touring, explaining that she had been “raped and drugged and held captive over some days” and that her subsequent recovery “took time”.

“You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain?” she continued. “I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke.”

Shortly afterwards, she called rape a “weapon of war” in a painful account of her experience shared on her website. She then went on to encourage fans to speak out about their personal struggles, adding that she felt “liberated” after sharing her story.

Duffy also hit out at Netflix that same year, calling them “irresponsible” for “glamourising the brutal reality of sex trafficking, kidnapping and rape” in the film 365 Days.

An upcoming Disney+ documentary will tell Duffy’s story, from her upbringing in Wales to her rise to fame, to her subsequent withdrawal, including interviews with family, friends and peers in the industry. The doc was announced in March but has not yet been given a release date.

After signing a record deal in 2007, Duffy’s 2008 debut album ‘Rockferry’ became the best-selling record in the UK that year. She released her second album, ‘Endlessly’, in 2010, and in 2020 she returned with the singles ‘Something Beautiful’ and ‘River In The Sky’.

Last month, she posted a photo of herself in a recording studio, writing: “If only I could find the right words to explain how much I’ve missed you all. Working on coming back to you.”

Fresh off a month-long series of surprise pop-up shows at small venues across America—along with one at much-larger venue Madison Square Garden—Phoebe Bridgers has announced an official phone-free tour. It kicks off in September with special guest Alex G; she’ll hit European dates in November and December with former Black Country, New Road vocalist Isaac Wood. It’s Bridgers’ first solo trek since her two-and-a-half year Reunion run. A full list of the Lost Tour stops is below. Bridgers notes that $1 from every ticket sold on the North American leg will be donated to RAINN.

Outside of her last album with Boygenius, 2023’s The Record, the Los Angeles songwriter hasn’t released her own work since her 2020 sophomore album Punisher and its subsequent Copycat EP. In 2024, she snagged three Grammys with her Boygenius brethren Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker.

Revisit Sam Sodomsky’s 2017 review of Stranger in the Alps.

Phoebe Bridgers:
09-15 Indianapolis, IN – Gainbridge Fieldhouse*
09-17 St. Paul, MN – Grand Casino Arena*
09-19 Chicago, IL – United Center*
09-22 Columbus, OH – Nationwide Arena*
09-25 Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center*
09-26 Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center*
09-28 Philadelphia, PA – Xfinity Mobile Arena*
09-29 Washington, DC – Capital One Arena*
10-01 Toronto, ON -Scotiabank Arena*
10-03 Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena*
10-06 Boston, MA – TD Garden*
10-09 Charlotte, NC – Spectrum Center*
10-10 Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena*
10-13 Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena*
10-16 Austin, TX – Moody Center*
10-17 Fort Worth, TX – Dickies Arena*
10-19 Denver, CO – Ball Arena*
10-21 Salt Lake City, UT – Delta Center*
10-23 Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena*
10-24 Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena*
10-27 San Francisco, CA – Chase Center*
10-30 Inglewood, CA – Intuit Dome*
10-31 Inglewood, CA – Intuit Dome*
11-23 Dublin, Ireland – 3Arena #
11-26 Manchester, England – Co-op Live #
11-27 Glasgow, Scotland – OVO Hydro #
11-28 Birmingham, England – bp pulse LIVE #
12-01 London, England – The O2 #
12-04 Paris, France – Adidas Arena #
12-05 Brussels, Belgium – Forest National #
12-07 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Ziggo Dome #
12-8 Düsseldorf, Germany – Mitsubishi Electric Halle #
12-9 Berlin, Germany – Velodrom #
12-11 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Arena #
12-12 Stockholm, Sweden – Avicii Arena #

* with Alex G
# with Isaac Wood

When a rogue researcher in China revealed in 2018 that he had used CRISPR to create three gene-edited children, his actions were almost universally condemned by biologists around the world. The main objection was not that gene-editing babies is wrong in itself, but that the CRISPR technique used was not safe and had a very high risk of causing harmful mutations.

Now, a team in the US has used an improved form of CRISPR, known as base editing, to edit healthy embryos and shown that it can be done without introducing unwanted mutations. So are we now at the point where we could consider allowing the use of the technique? The answer is no, because a major obstacle remains.

Our DNA consists of two strands. The first form of CRISPR to be developed uses a protein called Cas9, which hooks up with a piece of guide RNA that helps it find a specific place in the genome. Once there, Cas9 cuts through both strands. When a cell tries to repair the damage, it often makes mistakes, introducing small mutations that can disable genes.

So CRISPR-Cas9 is a destructive technique even when it works as intended, and it sometimes goes wrong, with the cut ends of DNA being reattached in the wrong places, causing large mutations and chromosomal abnormalities.

But many improved forms of CRISPR have been developed. For instance, CRISPR base editors change a single DNA letter to another, and during the process cut only a single strand of DNA. So base editing can be used to make precise repairs with much less chance of anything going wrong. The technique has already saved lives and a number of trials are under way – for instance, to test it as a treatment for conditions that result in very high cholesterol.

But editing embryos is very different from treating diseases. In adults, it doesn’t matter if gene editing doesn’t work perfectly in every cell – often only a fifth of cells in the liver, say, need to be successfully edited to treat a disease. In a human embryo, however, gene editing has to work perfectly, because that embryo will give rise to every cell in the body.

In 2017, a team in China reported promising results in a small study that used human embryos discarded during IVF because of abnormalities. They found base editing made the desired change in almost every embryo with very few unintended changes.

Now, Dieter Egli at Columbia University in New York and his colleagues have done a larger study using healthy two-cell embryos donated by parents, with broadly similar results. The team tried making two changes. One was successfully made in three-quarters of cells, with no unwanted changes. The other change worked only in around half of the cells, and often caused unwanted changes.

The researchers think the reason it worked well in one case and not so well in the other is down to the guide RNAs used – with better design and testing of guide RNAs, it should be possible to avoid off-target effects, they say.

But the biggest problem is that base editing didn’t work in every cell in each embryo, an issue called mosaicism. If a mosaic embryo develops into a child, only some of the cells in their body will have the intended change, which means they could still develop the disease the gene editing was meant to prevent, say. The three gene-edited children growing up in China may all be mosaics.

The trouble with this is that there is currently no way to be sure a gene-edited embryo isn’t a mosaic. When there is a risk of children inheriting a serious disease, a single cell can be removed from IVF embryos for genetic testing. This could be done with gene-edited embryos, too, but if the embryos are mosaic, testing a single cell isn’t enough.

So while these latest results are promising, they are not going to persuade any regulators that it is now safe to try germline gene editing, as it is known. The mosaicism problem is going to have to be solved first.

How? Well, one way would be to use gene-edited sperm or eggs. If the editing is done before an egg is fertilised and starts to divide, there should be no mosaicism. That has not been done in humans, but a start-up recently claimed it can generate sperm in the lab from sperm stem cells – and if that’s true it should be possible to gene-edit those sperm stem cells.

That sort of approach might us get to the point where we can safely gene-edit children. Whether we should is a whole different question.

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MILAN – Italian ground segment operator Leaf Space unveiled a new space connectivity service May 27. The technology, named TreeNet, aims to make space communications more seamless by treating individual satellites as nodes in an interconnected communications network. The company also announced partnerships and launch timelines to bring the project to fruition.

“This launch reinforces Leaf Space’s long-term commitment to building the infrastructure that allows space to function as a network bridging the gap between orbital operations and the connectivity of Earth-based infrastructure,” Cristina Zanchi, CEO of Leaf Space, said during SmallSat Europe.To test the initial phase, named Alpha, the company also announced partnerships with D-Orbit, based in Italy, and EnduroSat, based in Bulgaria, which will launch four satellites provided with TreeNet nodes in the first half of 2027.

Giovanni Pandolfi Bortoletto, Leaf Space chief product officer and co-founder, explained to SpaceNews that the startup is planning for a “rapid industrial ramp in the commercial phase, with a target production and deployment capability of at least 100 nodes per year from the first year of operations,”.

The full commercial phase is planned by the end of 2027.

D-Orbit and EnduroSat, Pandolfi Bortoletto added, were chosen for the early testing phase because of their high launch cadence. Beyond launch capacity, “they are long-standing partners with whom we have a strong alignment on longer-term use cases.”

D-Orbit sees the early testing as an opportunity to explore how in-orbit connectivity can simplify mission operations and enable data-driven use cases, the company said during the TreeNet launch at SmallSat Europe.

EnduroSat, meanwhile, emphasized the potential to expand its mission-as-a-service offering by introducing an always-on connectivity layer that is increasingly in demand from customers.

Founded in 2014 by Pandolfi Bortoletto and Jonata Puglia, Leaf Space initially set out to build launch capabilities before moving to Ground Segment-as-a-Service. It currently has around 40 antennas across 20 sites and serves customers among satellite operators and launch providers. In 2023, it completed a 35 million euro ($41 million) Series B round. 

“TreeNet is the natural next chapter in Leaf Space’s vision,” Pandolfi Bortoletto concluded. “We built the ground infrastructure. Now we are extending that principle into orbit itself.”

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It’s raining blood, hallelujah.

Violet Grohl has announced an extra headline show in London for her upcoming tour due to high demand.

The Los Angeles-based musician and daughter of Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl released her debut solo album ‘Be Sweet To Me’ last week (May 29) via Aurora Records, including the singles ‘THUM’, ‘Applefish’, ‘595’ and ‘Cool Buzz’.

In April, she announced a string of headline US, UK and European headline tour dates, including a show in London’s Camden Assembly, but now she has confirmed she will play two dates at the venue due to outstanding demand.

Her UK dates will now kick off in Manchester’s Deaf Institute on August 25, followed by Glasgow’s King Tuts the following night, and two nights at the Camdem Assembly on September 1 and 2.

While in Europe, she also plays shows in Berlin, Cologne and Paris, and will also make appearances at Reading and Leeds Festivals, Electric Picnic in Ireland and Pukkelpop in Belgium.

Tickets for all of the European shows are on sale now and you can find any remaining tickets here.

Grohl’s US dates include a run this month on the East Coast and tour in the Western States in September and October. See all of the dates below and find any remaining North American tickets here.

Violet Grohl’s 2026 tour dates are: 

JUNE
4 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
5 – Philadelphia, PA – The Lounge at World Stage Live
6 – Washington, DC – The Atlantis
23 – Baltimore, MD – Nevermore Music Hall
24 – New York, NY – The Rooftop at Pier 17 

AUGUST
19 – Berlin, DE – Mikropol
20 – Cologne, DE – Artheater
23 – Hasselt, BE – Pukkelpop Festival
25 – Manchester, UK – Deaf Institute
26 – Glasgow, UK, King Tuts
28 – Leeds, UK – Leeds Festival
29 – Stradbally, IE – Electric Picnic
30 – Reading, UK – Reading Festival

SEPTEMBER
01 – London, UK – Camden Assembly
02 – London, UK – Camden Assembly
04 – Paris, FR – La Maroquinerie
16 – Milkaukee, WI – Rave Bar
20 – Atlanta, GA – Shaky Knees Festival
22 – South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
24 – Boston, MA – Crystal Ballroom
26 – Brooklyn, NY – CBGB Festival

OCTOBER
22 – Vancouver, BC, Hollywood Theatre
23 – Portland, OR, Star Theatre
25 – Seattle, WA, Barboza

Grohl said earlier this year that she didn’t like male musicians her age.

“I don’t like male musicians my age – I don’t care,” she said. “They have attitude problems. They’ve been saying this about us for so fucking long – it’s time that they sit down, be quiet and play their music.

“The best advice I’ve been given is that it’s OK to say no or that you don’t want to do something,” she continued. “For a lot of women, it took them a really long time to accept and implement that into their lives. It’s inspiring to be around the kinds of people who don’t give a fuck and will say whatever they feel.”

Meanwhile, father Dave Grohl revealed several months ago that he had “no idea” Violet had signed a record deal until she told him at dinner.

The North American leg of Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE’s Home on the Range tour has been postponed. The news was first reported by Stereogum. Venues initially began sharing the announcement on Thursday, pointing to an undisclosed injury Earl suffered that will require surgery as the reason for the postponement.

“Tickets will be honored for the rescheduled dates, which will be announced as soon as they are confirmed,” reads a statement posted by participating venues. “Refunds will be available at point of purchase for anyone unable to attend the new dates.” According to Earl’s rep, the European dates are still a go; those are listed below.

Earl, MIKE, and Surf Gang released their double LP Pompeii // Utility in April.

Home on the Range Tour:
08-07 Katowice, Poland @ OFF Festival €
08-22 Salisbury, UK @ We Out Here £
08-25 Glasgow, UK @ o2 Academy Glasgow $
08-26 Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street $
08-27 Paris, France @ Bourse De Commerce £
08-28 Nottingham, UK @ Rock City $
08-29 London, UK @ All Points East £
08-31 London, UK @ o2 Forum Kentish Town $
09-02 Bristol, UK @ Prospect Building $
09-03 Brighton, UK @ Brighton Dome $
09-06 Paris, France @ Elysee Montmartre $
09-08 Tilburg, Netherlands @ 013 Poppodium $

$ – with Harrison [SURF GANG]
€ – Earl Sweatshirt only
£ – MIKE only with the Band of the Century

It may feel like the exhaustion of caring for a newborn leaves little room for romance. Now, researchers have found that people really do seem to love their partner less in the first year of parenthood – but there are ways to buffer against this.

Prior studies suggest that relationship satisfaction tends to decline in the two years after having a baby, but these rarely account for the state of things before pregnancy. When Agnieszka Sorokowska at the University of Wrocław, Poland, started a family, she wanted to know how her relationship was set to change. “I got pregnant, and then I wrote the grant proposal to look at this,” she says.

With her colleagues, Sorokowska recruited nearly 300 heterosexual couples without children who had been together for at least two years. Every six months, for at least two years, the participants completed surveys – independently of their partner – in which they ranked on a scale from 0 to 6 how much they loved their partner and how committed they were.

The researchers analysed results from 71 of these couples who had a baby during the study and found that pregnancy itself had no impact. But – in line with the prior evidence – the participants reported loving their partners less and being less committed to maintaining the relationship within one year after childbirth. There was no change in this time among the couples who remained without children.

Sorokowska – who presented the results at the Love, Actually and in Theory meeting in Edinburgh, UK, last month – plans to continue surveying these couples until their children reach adulthood, to determine whether the effects are long-lasting. But prior research suggests that things gradually improve. “There’s a steep decline in [relationship satisfaction] in the first year, only a small decline from year one to two, and then it seems to slowly recover [several years later],” says Valentina Rauch-Anderegg, an independent psychologist in Zurich, Switzerland.

The researchers didn’t measure how these initial changes impacted the new parents’ well-being, but Rauch-Anderegg doubts they cause substantial distress. “It’s not that we can say all these couples have relationship distress that means they need to see a therapist, but they certainly can notice something changed in their relationship,” she says.

Some of the factors that may be responsible include the physical and hormonal turmoil of pregnancy, and new parents feeling overwhelmed by childcare duties. “Simply sitting on a couch to Netflix-and-chill with your partner, or going for a walk, [often] becomes impossible,” says Rauch-Anderegg.

To prevent this, or bring some of the magic back, Rauch-Anderegg recommends asking loved ones for help and sharing any concerns with your partner. “You can make sure you’re communicating clearly about your vision for having a kid – what is the core of your relationship that you want to maintain even if there is a baby? Whether it’s a hike once a year or 20 minutes of partner time a week.”

Topics:

WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services Committee moved to preserve a Space Force missile-warning satellite program the Pentagon plans to cancel, authorizing $415 million for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Polar program in the markup of the fiscal 2027 defense policy bill.

During a markup session June 4, committee members debated amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. 

Among the space-related provisions approved was to keep alive the Next-Gen OPIR Polar, a Northrop Grumman program that has been under development since 2018. The satellites are designed to operate in highly elliptical orbits and provide missile-warning coverage over the Northern Hemisphere, particularly the polar regions.

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget proposes terminating the program, arguing that newer missile-warning architectures in low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit have reduced the need for dedicated polar satellites. The administration’s budget documents show the program’s projected cost at $3.4 billion, including approximately $2.1 billion already spent. The budget includes $436 million in fiscal 2026 largely to complete and close out development activities.

The committee took a different view, authorizing $415 million to continue development of the system.

Rep. Seth Moulton, the top Democrat on the Strategic Forces subcommittee, called Next-Gen OPIR Polar a critical capability that has long been supported by both U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Strategic Command.

Moulton argued that China and Russia have demonstrated capabilities specifically designed to degrade or destroy U.S. space assets and said the committee’s mark addresses areas the administration has not taken seriously enough.

Pushback on PTS-G

The committee also raised questions about the Space Force’s recent procurement contract awards for Protected Tactical SATCOM-Global, or PTS-G, a program intended to provide secure military communications through a proliferated network of satellites.

The Space Force announced May 22 that it awarded a combined $437.6 million to Viasat and Intelsat, now part of SES, for secure X-band and Ka-band communications satellites. The contracts include operation of the spacecraft because PTS-G is structured as a government-owned, contractor-operated constellation.

The committee criticized the decision to procure only two satellites — one from each company — for a program that had been promoted as a proliferated architecture. Pentagon budget documents described plans for a “swarm” of four satellites. While the contract announcement did not specify the number of spacecraft being purchased, committee language confirms the procurement consists of two satellites.

“The Space Force highlighted proliferation and disaggregation as attributes they were prioritizing in the President’s budget request,” the committee wrote.

Lawmakers argued that the original program sought to strengthen the industrial base by encouraging new entrants that could leverage commercial manufacturing capabilities and existing hardware. Procuring only two satellites, the committee said, runs counter to the goal of achieving resilience through larger numbers of lower-cost spacecraft.

The committee directed the Space Force to provide a report detailing how it intends to implement a resilient tactical satellite communications architecture consistent with the original objectives of the PTS-G program. Lawmakers also requested options for accelerating procurement of additional single-band satellites to achieve a more distributed architecture sooner.

More focus on PNT enterprise 

The bill also reflects congressional frustration with management of the Pentagon’s positioning, navigation and timing enterprise, the collection of systems and infrastructure centered on GPS.

Moulton said the enterprise remains disjointed and underprioritized despite its importance to military operations.

Strategic Forces subcommittee chairman Scott DesJarlais said the committee’s proposal requires the Defense Department to designate a single official responsible for oversight of the positioning, navigation and timing enterprise.

The provision would replace an existing oversight structure that lawmakers have criticized as ineffective. DesJarlais said the measure also removes what he described as duplicative bureaucracy that has slowed development of new technologies and implementation of a broader positioning, navigation and timing strategy.

Related

Primavera Sound has been hit by “adverse weather conditions”, with Alex G and Mac DeMarco’s sets cancelled and stages being temporarily suspended.

Today (June 4) is the opening day of the festival at the Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona, with tonight’s headliners set to be Doja Cat, Massive Attack and Bad Gyal. It runs for the next two days, with The Cure, The xx, Gorillaz, My Bloody Valentine, Addison Rae and Skrillex also topping the bill.

However, earlier this evening, the big screens on the main stages showed a warning message, explaining that “due to adverse weather conditions, performances on this stage have been temporarily suspended.”

“Please remain calm and follow the instructions of the festival’s security and staff teams,” it continued. “Stay tuned to the festival screens and official channels for further updates. Thank you for your cooperation.”

THE WEATHER IN BARCELONA IS NOT LOOKING GREAT AT THE MOMENT BUT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG I WILL SEARCH FOR A PLAN B. LETS BOW OUR HEADS AND PRAY TOGETHER BECAUSE I NEED TO SEE MY ANGELS TONIGHT. THIS RAIN WONT STOP OUR FUN

— DOJA CAT (@DojaCat) June 4, 2026

 

Amid heavy rain, areas of the festival site were closed, including the Estrella Damm and Revolut stages, while at 9:30pm local time, the festival officially announced that Alex G’s set on the Revolut Stage had been cancelled, as had DeMarco’s on the Occident Stage.

According to BBC Weather, there is a 90 per cent chance of heavy rain showers continuing until 2am local time.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and will keep you informed as soon as we have further updates,” they wrote.

Massive Attack are due to play on the Estrella Damm stage at 9:55pm, with Doja Cat scheduled for 11:30pm on the Revolut Stage. Bad Gyal’s set on Estrella Damm is listed as starting at 1:20am. Father John Misty, Florence Road, Melt-Banana and Panda Bear are also set to play later today.

For the fifth consecutive year, Amazon Music is producing and broadcasting the exclusive livestream of the festival, with The Cure, Doja Cat, Gorillaz, Little Simz and Geese among those whose sets are scheduled to be broadcast in full.

The festival officially opened yesterday (June 3), with performances from Wet Leg, Guitarricadelafuente and Yard Act.

Last year’s edition of Primavera Sound Barcelona was headlined by Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter. The event also hosted slots from LCD Soundsystem, FKA Twigs, Haim, Jamie xx, Fontaines D.C., Beach House, IDLES, Turnstile and more.

Amazon Music is once again streaming select performances from Primavera Sound Barcelona, which is already underway in the Spanish city. The 2026 edition will livestream on Thursday, June 4; Friday, June, 5; and Saturday, June 6. The broadcast begins each day at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on the Amazon Music channels on Twitch and Prime Video. Pitchfork is proud to be a media partner of Primavera Sound this year as well.

Among the artists set to have their performances broadcast on the livestream are the Cure, the xx, Big Thief, Geese, Doja Cat, Gorillaz, Ethel Cain, Wet Leg, Skrillex, Father John Misty, Addison Rae, Oklou, Sudan Archives, Alex G, Little Simz, Mac DeMarco, Amaarae, Grace Ives, Jade, Buscabulla, Knocked Loose, 2Hollis, Bad Gyal, Marina, Ralphie Choo, Ravyn Lenae, Men I Trust, Role Model, Rusowsky, TV Girl, and Viagra Boys.

Primavera Sound Barcelona 2026 Schedule

(All times listed in Eastern Daylight Time)

* schedule is subject to change

Thursday, June 4, 2026

1:30 PM – Gisela João
1:35 PM – Ravyn Lenae
2:10 PM – Men I Trust
2:55 PM – Alex G
3:00 PM – Geese
4:05 PM – Oklou
4:10 PM – Wet Leg
5:05 PM – Mac DeMarco
5:35 PM – Doja Cat
6:10 PM – Father John Misty
7:20 PM – Bad Gyal
7:30 PM – TV Girl
8:30 PM – 2hollis

Friday, June 5, 2026

1:30 PM – Aiko El Grupo 
1:45 PM – Ethel Cain 
2:15 PM – PAVVLA 
3:00 PM – Buscabulla 
3:00 PM – Addison Rae 
3:55 PM – Guitarricadelafuente 
4:15 PM – The Cure 
4:55 PM – Ralphie Choo 
6:00 PM – Role Model 
7:05 PM – Skrillex 
7:15 PM – Amaarae 
8:10 PM – JADE

Saturday, June 6, 2026

1:30 PM – Barry B 
1:40 PM – Big Thief 
2:15 PM – Baxter Dury 
3:00 PM – Little Simz 
3:20 PM – Ashnikko 
4:10 PM – Viagra Boys 
4:15 PM – Bestia Bebé 
5:00 PM – Sudan Archives 
5:45 PM – Grace Ives 
5:45 PM – The xx 
6:35 PM – Rusowsky 
7:20 PM – Gorillaz 
7:35 PM – MARINA 
8:35 PM – Knocked Loose