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CNN  —  For a fleeting moment, Ukraine’s conflict may have come full circle. In the past 48 hours, US President Donald Trump has perhaps said his most forcefully direct words yet on arming Ukraine. And in the same period, the Kremlin have given their blankest indication to this White House that they are not interested in a realistic, negotiated settlement to the war. Let us start with Trump’s comments on arming Ukraine, a reversion to a basic bedrock of US foreign policy for decades – opposing Russian aggression. “We’re going to send some more weapons,” the president said Monday of…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An 11-month strike by video game performers could formally end this week if members ratify a deal that delivers pay raises, control over their likenesses and artificial intelligence protections. The agreement feels “like diamond amounts of pressure suddenly lifted,” said Sarah Elmaleh, a voice actor and chair of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ interactive branch negotiating committee.Union members have until Wednesday at 5 p.m. Pacific to vote on ratifying the tentative agreement.Voice and body performers for video games raised concerns that unregulated use of AI could displace them and threaten their…

by Sarah Kuta Last updated: 11:15 AM ET, Tue July 8, 2025 Celebrity Cruises is sharing more details about the spaces onboard its forthcoming ship, Celebrity Xcel.The new vessel, slated to debut in November, will spend its first season in Fort Lauderdale, offering 7-night sailings to The Bahamas, Mexico, Cayman Islands, Puerto Plata, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. Next summer, the vessel will head across the Atlantic to Europe to offer 7- to 11-night journeys from Barcelona and Athens. “Celebrity Xcel will set sail with seven new elevated experiences that invite guests to escape their daily routine and make memories…

Replit on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership deal with Microsoft that should be good for business for both of them.  Replit will become available through Microsoft’s enterprise cloud app store, Azure Marketplace, meaning Microsoft shops will be able to purchase Replit subscriptions there. Replit is also integrating its tech with a number of Microsoft cloud services like containers, virtual machines, and Microsoft’s version of Postgres — the database that Replit supports — called Neon Serverless Postgres. That means that Azure should generate its share of revenue from Replit apps that are used in production. Microsoft famously offers its own hugely popular vibe…

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Grand Canyon University announced Tuesday its move to the Mountain West Conference will begin immediately.The school in Phoenix was initially scheduled to transition from the Western Athletic Conference to its new league on July 1, 2026. The Mountain West offered an earlier transition, however, allowing the school to compete for conference championships this fall.“The addition of Grand Canyon for the 2025-26 academic year is a significant win for the student-athletes at GCU and in the Mountain West,” conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez said in a statement.Grand Canyon will be one of 14 schools competing in the…

CNN  —  Thirteen women and two men who survived captivity by Hamas said they experienced or witnessed sexual violence while held hostage in Gaza, according to a new report by a group of Israeli researchers known as the Dinah Project. The Dinah Project experts — all women — gathered first-hand testimonies from the 15 returned hostages, one survivor of an attempted rape during the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, 17 eye and ear witnesses and 27 first responders who attended the scenes of the attacks. These testimonies, coupled with forensic reports and photographs and videos from the attacks, led them…

PARIS (AP) — Armani Privé opened Tuesday under an unmistakable shadow. For the first time in the 20-year history of his couture house, Giorgio Armani was not present in Paris to take his bow.Days from his 91st birthday and following doctors’ advice after a recent hospital stay, Armani reportedly oversaw the Paris couture week show remotely from home, a moment of absence that lands heavily for a designer who has shaped every one of his brand’s collections since its founding.The show’s theme, “Seductive Black,” played out with literal and symbolic force on the runway: black in myriad forms, from liquid…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species. On Tuesday, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa – which once stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall – with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the…

The typical online checkout experience has become bloated with friction. And while more companies are building solutions around online checkout, few are rethinking it from scratch. One such company is OneText, which is building what it calls a “text-to-buy network,” that lets shoppers complete purchases via text message. The company, founded by former PayPal employees, just closed a $4.5 million seed round backed by Khosla Ventures, Coatue, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Friends (the fund created by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds, and Harry’s), and Matt Bellamy, the frontman of Muse. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Fudem came up with…

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a … a purple and orange shape-shifting chemical compound?Writer-director James Gunn’s “Superman” was always going to be a strange chemistry of filmmaker and material. Gunn, the mind behind “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad,” has reliably drifted toward a B-movie superhero realm populated (usually over-populated) with the lesser-known freaks, oddities and grotesquerie of back-issue comics.But you don’t get more mainstream than Superman. And let’s face it, unless Christopher Reeve is in the suit, the rock-jawed Man of Steel can be a bit of a bore. Much of the fun and frustration…