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The beloved reality star's death was "a total shock and unexpected," according to her heartbroken parents.

The beloved reality star's death was "a total shock and unexpected," according to her heartbroken parents.

California lawmakers are ramping up efforts to reopen Canada's market to American wine after a trade dispute triggered a sharp decline in exports and deepened financial pressure on wineries across the state.

Current State Of Physical AI: Everything You Need To Know

Citi's Robotics & Physical AI Leadership Conference wrapped up on Tuesday. The annual Citi Research event brings together robotics founders, investors, operators, and industry executives to assess the state of "physical AI."

Analyst Heath Terry summarized the key takeaways Wednesday morning, painting a picture of the robotics industry moving from proof of concept to commercial deployment, while warning that scaling robots remains challenging.

"Labor shortages, reshoring, and favorable regulatory tailwinds are accelerating enterprise demand, while data scarcity, talent constraints, battery limitations, and high deployment costs remain key friction points," Terry explained to clients. 

Citi said the winners in physical AI will likely be firms that own proprietary real-world data, solve specific labor bottlenecks and use Robotics-as-a-Service models to reduce upfront costs for customers.

Terry highlighted automation-exposed industrial names including Rockwell Automation, Emerson Electric, Honeywell, Symbotic, Ralliant and Belden as potential beneficiaries.

Humanoids are attracting significant investor interest. Last month, we detailed how readers can invest ahead of a major ramp in humanoid production expected in the coming quarters. Read the report. 

Via Deutsche Bank: 

Over the last two years, about $20 billion has been invested in physical AI, with applications spanning warehouses, logistics, trucking, construction, aviation, and defense.

Last week, carmaker BMW revealed that a new upgraded humanoid is walking its factory floors at the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina. 

Here are Citi's top takeaways from the physical AI conference: 

Key AI Takeaways

Physical AI is transitioning from proof-of-concept to commercial deployment, but the path to scale is more operationally intensive than the digital AI analogy suggests. Unlike large language models, where a base model carries a lot of the value, physical AI places the premium on proprietary, task-specific data collected in real-world environments, purpose-built hardware, and safety certification.

Across sessions, participants consistently identified data scarcity as the binding constraint, with Instawork noting that even tens of millions of hours of data being collected in 2026 likely represents only basis points, not percentage points, of what is ultimately needed to achieve high-level robotic performance. Power, battery longevity, and chip architecture are also emerging as critical bottlenecks, with panelists noting that existing semiconductor platforms were designed for datacenter workloads, not real-time edge inference on mobile platforms.

The most commercially advanced companies, whether in humanoids, warehouse AMRs, autonomous trucking, or construction, shared a common profile: they started with a specific, high-pain labor problem, adopted a Robotics-as-a-Service model to lower customer adoption barriers, and prioritized safety and reliability above model sophistication.g significant investment enthusiasm, but near-term ROI is being driven by purpose-built AMRs and specialized systems from companies like Locus Robotics and Dexterity. The conference reinforced our view that physical AI is a decade- long buildout, with durable value accruing to companies that own the data flywheel, solve real deployment problems, and meet the highest safety standards.

Key Industrials Takeaways

After attending Citi's Robotics & Physical AI Leadership Conference, we came away convinced that automation, robotics, and physical AI continue to make gradual progress toward broader commercialization, creating what we view as a durable long-term growth tailwind for our automation-exposed industrial companies. Our preferred ways to gain exposure to industrial automation are through Buy-rated ROK, EMR, and HON (pure-play automation providers), SYM (warehouse automation), RAL (sensors and T&M), and BDC (industrial networking), as we view these companies as well positioned to benefit from increasing investments in automation (including equipment, software, and AI). Key drivers of automation adoption remain a constrained labor market as well as accelerating domestic manufacturing activity and capacity expansions, with automation supportive of higher throughput, increased uptime, and improved operational efficiency/accuracy that appears supportive of healthy ROIs.

While logistics, warehousing, and autos appear to be important end markets driving automation adoption (higher volume, repetitive tasks), several panelists highlighted AI's potential to unlock new skills/capabilities for robotics and automation, which could, over time, expand addressable markets for automation solutions (new end markets and new use cases), which we view as a broad positive. Advances in AI/LLMs along with growing availability of data (real-world as well as simulated) are leading to more refined technology through, for instance more integrated hardware and software and more active usage driving increasingly capable deployments (as AI-enabled systems grow "smarter"), which we think could further support accelerating automation adoption over time. In some instances, access to high-quality data remains a bottleneck (where companies are combining simulations with limited real-world data), but we also view this as an opportunity and competitive moat for our companies, given their large installed base and ability to leverage/mine data to further drive autonomy and operational efficiency.

Select companies also highlighted robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business models that potentially lower the barriers to adoption for small and medium sized enterprises given lower or minimal upfront capital costs, which we view as supportive of our constructive view on SYM's warehouse-as-a-service offering (GreenBox/Exol), which we think could help drive increasing adoption of SYM' warehouse automation solutions amongst a broader range of customers.

The most important takeaway is that Physical AI is emerging and deployments will be ramped up as Robotics-as-a-Service models reduce upfront customer costs. Physical AI may eventually benefit from scaling laws, but the path will be much slower and more operationally intensive than the chatbot boom.

Professional subscribers can read a whole lot more on physical AI at our Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2026 - 21:20

Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger, a Rockland Democrat, former nurse and former mayor, is drawing sudden national attention after saying Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner encouraged her to consider taking his place on the ballot in the Maine Senate race.

Platner announced Wednesday evening that he will be dropping out of the Maine Senate race.

The proposal, which was reportedly discussed during a recent senior staff meeting, would suspend academy operations for several months after the department’s January 2028 graduating class.

LeBron James is still not ready to make his next move.

Mikel Brown Jr.’s pro debut showed he can make extraordinary plays. Now the Nets have to help him make the ordinary ones over and over.

Canada Considered Suing Citizens Over "False And Misleading" Social Media Posts

Authored by Cindy Harper via ReclaimTheNet.org,

The Canadian government drew up a plan to take individual citizens to court over what they post online. That plan sat inside a 35-page internal memo from the Department of Industry, most of it blacked out before the public could see it.

Blacklock's Reporter pried the document loose through an Access to Information request. Dated March 31 and titled "Misinformation And Disinformation Strategy," it belongs to the department run by Minister Melanie Joly, known as ISED. The memo weighs "legal action" against people who post what the government calls "false and misleading information" on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

What kind of legal action? The redactions hide that. What survives the black ink is the logic. "This strategy seeks to uphold the integrity of and public trust in government information," the memo says. The department is appointing itself guardian of its own reputation, with lawsuits as one available tool.

Here is who would decide. ISED itself would judge whether a post is "factually incorrect, misleading or out of context." The same department that dislikes a post gets to rule on whether the post is true. No court makes that call first and no independent reviewer checks the work. The government writes the definition of misinformation and then enforces it against the people it defines.

The department @ISED_CA itself would determine whether social media posts were “factually incorrect, misleading or out of context.” Any punitive measures against individuals would be “proportionate and subject to senior level approval.” https://t.co/lIFVBUVxvJ pic.twitter.com/6tRaRqNNRI

— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) July 4, 2026

The memo describes any punishment as "proportionate and subject to senior level approval." That language reassures no one. Proportion gets measured by the same officials pushing the complaint, and senior approval means a manager signs off, not a judge.

Officials already watch. Managers "already monitor the department's official social media channels and media outlets on a daily basis for comments and recurring inaccuracies," the memo says. The strategy would push that surveillance from reaction toward "prevention and early detection," catching disfavored speech earlier in its life.

The plan has drawn sharp opposition reaction. Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis, in a post on X, asked who defines misinformation in the first place: "Will government become the arbiter of truth? That is a dangerous path for a free society." Conservative MP Roman Baber argued the direction of fear runs the wrong way, writing that government "should fear citizens at the free press and the ballot box," and that "the reverse, citizens fearing government, gives rise to authoritarianism."

The chilling effect writes itself. A citizen who knows a federal department is reading posts, grading them for accuracy, and holding a lawsuit in reserve thinks twice before typing. The threat does the work a courtroom never has to.

The government's own files admit the problem. Its research found Canadians feel capable of spotting fake news and do not want Ottawa "declaring what is true or not." The memo concedes that answering misinformation can amplify it, and that going after individuals risks "further backlash." The department understood the public would object and mapped the plan anyway.

Compare the tune from four years back. This same Liberal government declared that "the rights and freedoms that individuals have offline must also be protected online." That promise reads differently next to a memo about suing people for their posts. It also sits oddly against the government's own recent history: Canada repealed Section 181 of the Criminal Code, the "false news" offence, in 2019, after the Supreme Court found the provision violated freedom of expression.

The non-profit Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has since begun asking publicly whether any Canadians have already received notices from the federal government demanding they take down online posts.

Ottawa has not explained how the monitoring runs, how often lawsuits were floated, or what a post must do to land on the department's radar. The memo sets no threshold. It names no outside check. It leaves a federal department free to decide which citizens spoke falsely and what the price should be.

A government sure of its facts answers speech with more speech. This one drafted a plan to answer speech with lawyers.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2026 - 20:55

California Democrats pushed a controversial new healthcare tax through the legislature without a single Republican vote. Gov. Gavin Newsom included it in the 2026-27 budget package — the last of his governorship.

From the press box to the executive suite. 

France coach Didier Deschamps said that superstar Kylian Mbappé is doing well after a Paraguayan senator made racist remarks toward him following Les Bleus’ Round of 16 win over Paraguay.

While many residents welcomed the revival, critics on social media blasted the change as another sign of neighborhood gentrification.

"Those doctors ruined my little girl’s whole childhood. I feel so let down by everybody," the girl's mom said.

The task awaiting Kris Gross this weekend is not unfamiliar but is nonetheless daunting: Continue to excel in bringing in young talent while operating at a disadvantage. 

The prince's court humiliation is a momentous victory for freedom of the press — and a brutal defeat for the tyrannical self-pity of celebrity narcissists like Harry and Meghan.

Nuclear Power Capacity To Jump 44% By 2036 As China Surpasses US

Global nuclear capacity is set to surge by 44% over the next decade as China topples the United States as the biggest nuclear power capacity holder and India will hike its capacity to boost energy security. These are the estimates in a new report by BloombergNEF, which sees total global nuclear capacity at 535 gigawatts (GW) by 2036, up from the 372 GW of installed capacity as of the end of 2025.

The world is projected to have as much as 535 gigawatts of installed nuclear power by 2036, up from 372 last year, according to the report released Wednesday.

Echoing our frequent observations showing how aggressively Chinese nuclear output is growing compared to the stagnant US nuclear industry...

Four months later, China has added 9 more reactors and is now building a total of 39 nuclear power plants. Meanwhile the US has added 0 and is still building 0 https://t.co/TJ6BoMghNk pic.twitter.com/O4idOANNUr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 15, 2026

... China is set to nearly double its current nuclear capacity to 102 GW from 59 GW, a figure that would propel it past the US to become the world’s biggest nuclear nation.

Energy security, soaring electricity demand from AI centers, and decarbonization targets will all combine to contribute to the surge in nuclear power capacity additions in the coming decade.

“Nuclear power has essentially been ‘running in place’ since the Fukushima disaster in 2011,” according to the report. “This status quo is set to change.”

Nuclear power is making a global comeback as governments and tech companies seek reliable, low-carbon energy sources. At the same time, electricity demand is surging, driven by industrial users, increasingly electrified homes, and power-hungry data centers. Meanwhile, rising social acceptance of nuclear power is pushing utilities and governments around the world to reconsider policies that have hindered development. 

At the same time, the report predicts that capacity growth will likely be tempered by slow regulatory processes that have historically dragged on new nuclear projects. Echoing our frequent lament, in the US, where the technology is getting strong support from the Trump administration, there’s only one commercial plant under construction, though BNEF expects the pace to accelerate in the coming decade.

Meanwhile, iIn the biggest emerging markets in Asia, China and India, nuclear power will be key to meeting rising electricity demand from electrification and AI centers.

China is building solar, wind, coal, and nuclear with equal enthusiasm to include “all of the above” energy sources, OilPrice reports. Beijing plans to put into operation seven new nuclear reactors this year, boosting its already substantial fleet, which is already the largest in the world.

Meanwhile, a panel set up by India’s power ministry has said in a report that India’s goal to boost its installed nuclear power capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2047, up from just 8.8 GW now, would require as much as 19.28 trillion Indian rupees, or $204 billion at current exchange rates, of cumulative capital.

The Indian government has said that its Nuclear Energy Mission targets 100 GW capacity by 2047 “through deployment of existing and emerging advanced nuclear technologies, both indigenous & with foreign cooperation.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/08/2026 - 20:30

After a strike ’em out, throw ’em out double play, the Yankees’ dugout was dealt a throw ’em out, throw ’em out from home plate umpire Doug Eddings.

"All fraud is harmful, but defrauding education dollars meant to help kids learn and succeed is especially hideous."