A ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban collapses, and each side calls the other's strike the first one

World

Afghan and Pakistani forces traded strikes across the border after eight months of calm, with dozens of civilians reported dead — and both governments insist they were only answering an attack.

Finance

The metal everyone piled into as a safe haven fell hard, on track for its steepest quarterly drop since 2013, undone by the same high inflation and rising rates that were supposed to make it shine.

Tech

The cost of running AI is now large enough that engineers at OpenAI, Nvidia, and GitHub are deliberately shortening what models say — and a wave of cheaper models is arriving for the same reason.

Mind & body

Hearing runs on a few thousand tiny cells that convert air movement into nerve signals.

Climate

Washington is drafting a ban on foreign-made inverters — the device that connects solar panels and batteries to the power grid — over fears China could use them to switch supply off from afar.

Space

A $30 million rescue mission launches to tow the 21-year-old Swift telescope back to a safe orbit, because Swift was built without the thrusters to save itself.

Biotech

A US committee that will decide whether pharmacies can make seven unproven peptides is now stacked with people who prescribe and profit from them.

Money

A credit score isn't a report card on your character.

Sports

As free agency opens, hockey has 245 no-trade clauses to the other big leagues' handful.

Gaming

Microsoft plans studio closures and cuts starting July 6, even as its own developers strike elsewhere to prove an unfinished game dies when its team does.

Food

H5N1 has now been confirmed on every continent on Earth.

Cyber

A flaw in the payroll software that runs much of corporate HR was attacked before Oracle even knew it existed.