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Toasted ham baguettes in hand, we cheered as the new-generation Nightjet drew into Vienna Hauptbahnhof. It was a little before 7pm, and as the carriages hummed past I felt a rush of joy, like celebrity trainspotter Francis Bourgeois, but without the GoPro on my forehead. For more than three years I’ve been documenting the renaissance of sleeper trains, and I’d wondered if I might one day tire of them. But the thrill seems only to intensify each time I embark on another nocturnal adventure, this time with my two daughters – aged eight and five – who were already arguing over the top berth. The first four carriages were designated for travellers to the Italian port city of La Spezia, the other seven carrying on to Roma Tiburtina, where we would alight at 10am. Once in Rome we had 24 hours to eat classic carbonara, dark chocolate gelato, and bike around the Villa Borghese before taking a train to Florence. Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) has played the lead role in resuscitating Europe’s night trains. Towards the end of 2016, ÖBB launched its Nightjet network on 14 routes, using old rolling stock it bought from Deutsche Bahn. Then, to the delight of train nerds like me, it launched a brand-new fleet at the end of 2023, and now operates 20 routes across Europe. We were now on board this high-spec service, which smelled of freshly unpacked furniture, the carpets soft underfoot, the lighting adjustable to disco hues of neon blue and punk pink. We were booked into a couchette carriage, which mostly comprisesd mini cabins designed for solo travellers preferring privacy. Placing shoes and small bags in lockers, passengers can open a metal door with a keycard and crawl into their single berth, drawing the door closed around them, and not have to look at another human until morning. Last year I had trialled the mini cabins from Vienna to Hamburg alongside a tall friend who had likened the experience to sleeping inside a bread bin, though I hadn’t found it as claustrophobic as I’d feared, just a bit hard, chilly, and with a pillow as flat as a postage stamp. So I was curious to see how the carriage’s four-person private compartments, for families and groups, would differ. New generation Nightjet train in Austria. Photograph: Christian Blumenstein Normally happy to share with strangers, I’d booked a whole compartment for the three of us: more to protect other hapless travellers from my children, who were now swinging off the berths like members of Cirque du Soleil, their sweaty socks strewn under the seats. With raised sides, the upper berths were safe for the girls to sleep in without rolling out, and I set about tucking in their sheets while they settled down to finish their baguettes. There is no dining car on the Nightjet, so we’d bought food from the station, which was now moving backwards as the train sailed out of the Austrian capital in silence, smoothly curving south-west. Two days earlier we’d arrived in Vienna by train from London, via Paris, and had checked into the Superbude Wien Prater, a curious hotel that appeared part art-installation, part hostel, with gen Zs slouched around worn leather sofas on MacBooks. With four-bed family cabins overlooking the Prater amusement park, it was a great location from which to explore the city, then finish the evening with a terrifying rollercoaster and a spicy Bitzinger wurst. A friend had described Vienna to me as a grand and beautiful “retirement village”, but, on the contrary, its green spaces, playgrounds and museums made it an easy stop for 48 hours with kids. The thrill seems only to intensify each time I embark on another nocturnal rail adventure Hopping off the Nightjet from Paris, we’d gone straight to my favourite restaurant, Edelgreisslerei Opocensky – an unassuming nook serving homely dishes such as stuffed gnocchi, and goulash with dumplings – before whiling away an afternoon at the Children’s Museum at Schönbrunn Palace. Dressing up like young Habsburgs, the girls had swanned around in wigs and musty gowns, laying tables for banquets and begging not to leave – a far cry from our usual museum experiences. Before boarding this train we’d had one last run around the interactive Technical Museum, where the human-sized hamster wheels, peg games and slides had so worn out the children that my five-year-old was asleep as the train plunged into the Semmering mountain pass. It was still light as we swept around the Alps, my eight-year-old kneeling at the window and asking where local people shopped, so few and far between were signs of human life. Horses grazed in paddocks, cows nuzzled, and the occasional hamlet emerged from round a bend as though the chalets were shaken like dice and tossed into the slopes. In the blue-grey twilight we watched streams gleam like strips of metal, and spotted a single stag poised at the edge of a wood, before the train made a long stop at the Styrian city of Leoben, at which point we turned in. Monisha Rajesh and her daughters disembark the night train. Photograph: Monisha Rajesh Like the mini cabins, the compartment was still too cold, the pillow still too flat, but the berths were wider and the huge window a blessing compared with the single berths’ portholes – this one allowed for wistful gazing. Shoving a rolled-up jumper under my head, I fell asleep, waking at 7am to rumpled clouds and a golden flare on the horizon. Most night trains terminate soon after passengers have woken up, but this one was perfect, allowing us to enjoy a leisurely breakfast of hot chocolate and jam rolls while watching the Tuscan dawn breaking into song, and Umbrian lakes and cornfields running parallel before we finally drew into Rome – on time. When travelling alone I relish arriving with the entire day at my disposal, but with children it’s hard work waiting until 3pm to check in to accommodation, so I default to staying at a Hoxton hotel if one is available. Its Flexy Time policy allows guests to choose what time they check in and out for free, and by 11am we had checked in, showered and set off to toss coins in the Trevi fountain, finding thick whorls of eggy carbonara at nearby trattoria Maccheroni, and gelato at Don Nino. To avoid the crowds and heat, we waited until 6pm to hire an electric pedal car from Bici Pincio at the Villa Borghese and drove around the landscaped, leafy grounds, relishing the quietness of the evening ride. Excited about the next adventure in Florence, the girls had only one complaint: that they couldn’t ride there on the night train. Monisha Rajesh is the author of Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train (Bloomsbury, £22), published on 28 August and available on pre-order at guardianbookshop.com Omio provided travel in a four-person private compartment in a couchette carriage from Vienna to Rome (from £357). Accommodation was provided by Superbude Wien Prater in Vienna (doubles from €89 room-only); and The Hoxton in Rome (doubles from €189 room-only) https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/jul/21/night-train-nightjet-sleper-vienna-to-rome

Iran, France, Germany and the United Kingdom will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran. The talks scheduled for Friday come after foreign ministers of the E3 nations, as those European countries are known, as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief, held their first call on Thursday with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi since Israel and the United States attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4 Build regional stability from the ashes of Netanyahu’s war on JCPOA list 2 of 4 France, UK, Germany to reimpose Iran sanctions in August if no progress list 3 of 4 New reports cast doubt on impact of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites list 4 of 4 Will Israel ever get blowback for bombing its neighbours? end of list The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran, from which the US withdrew in 2018, that had lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear programme. “The meeting between Iran, Britain, France and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, was quoted by Iranian state media as saying. The E3 have said they would restore United Nations sanctions on Tehran by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the US, before Israel launched a surprise attack, do not resume or fail to produce concrete results. Iran has accused the US of complicity in the Israeli attack, which killed top Iranian military officials, nuclear scientists and hundreds of civilians. The US also launched strikes on three major Iranian nuclear sites, claiming to have “obliterated” them. A ceasefire took effect on June 24. “If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely moral and legal ground,” Araghchi said last week. Before the Israel-Iran war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks mediated by Oman but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimise any risk of weaponisation. Tehran maintains that its nuclear programme is solely meant for civilian purposes. Middle East assessments Also on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, the top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues. Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting. Putin expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme”, he added. Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran, but it did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the US joined Israel’s bombing campaign. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/20/iran-to-hold-nuclear-talks-with-3-european-powers-on-friday

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Türkiye has seen a rise in the roundup of street cats, long considered a familiar part of the urban landscape and a favorite among tourists, Kazinform News Agency correspondent reports. According to animal rights organizations, the animals are being collected in large numbers and either placed in shelters with poor sanitary conditions or relocated to underdeveloped areas, where many do not survive. Over the past year and a half, the number of stray cats has significantly increased, which is attributed to the rising cost of veterinary services and the departure of foreign residents facing residency issues, many of whom abandoned their pets. The situation worsened after the adoption of a 2024 law aimed at controlling the stray dog po[CENSORED]tion, which is now also being applied to cats. Once caught, the animals are sterilized and either released into impoverished areas or placed in overcrowded shelters where they often fall ill or die. Amid growing public concern, the hashtag #SokakHayvanlarıSahipsizDeğil (Street animals are not ownerless) has gained traction on the platform X (formerly Twitter). Users are urging residents and local authorities to continue caring for stray animals by leaving out food and water or possible shelter. “If dogs and cats live peacefully on a street, that street is reliable, that neighborhood is reliable, that city is reliable; if the opposite is true, neither that street, nor that neighborhood, nor that city is livable,” they note. Earlier, Türkiye’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has emphasized that the collection of stray animals in all provinces must begin immediately in accordance with the law. The ministry warned that municipalities failing to comply may face a fine of 71,965 Turkish liras (around $2,000) per stray animal found on the street. Although the law allows local authorities until 2028 to expand shelter infrastructure, the obligation to remove animals from public areas took effect as soon as the law was implemented and cannot be postponed, officials stressed. Earlier, it was reported that Kazakh Tazy is gaining international recognition as a national symbol of Kazakhstan. https://qazinform.com/news/street-cats-face-mass-roundups-in-trkiye-animal-rights-activists-raise-alarm-8b6d3b

The Pakistan U-16 Men's Volleyball Team continued their extraordinary unbeaten run in the 2nd Asian Men's U16 Volleyball Championship 2025 in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand by delivering a stunning performance in the semi-final match against traditional rivals India, winning by 3-0 sets. The highly anticipated match took place on Friday and saw Team Pakistan dominate with set scores of 25-16, 25-19, and 25-12, securing a comprehensive victory and punching their ticket to the final of the Championship. The match showcased exceptional skills, discipline, and team coordination. Among the standout performers were Junaid, Faizan, Irfan, and Talha, who led the attack and defense with composure and determination throughout the game. Pakistan's superior blocking and fast counter-attacks left the Indian team struggling to gain momentum. The result not only highlights Pakistan's potential at the youth level but also secures their position as one of Asia's strongest emerging volleyball nations. Coach's Remarks Speaking after the match, Head Coach Kafiyatullah said: "Today's match was not just a win over our arch-rivals India; it was a statement. Our players have shown incredible resilience, maturity, and teamwork throughout the tournament. I am immensely proud of each one of them. Beating India in such a convincing manner in the semi-final is a huge morale boost ahead of the final. We now shift our focus to the Final against Iran, which will be another tough battle, but the boys are ready." Following semis victory, Pakistan will face a formidable opponent — Iran — on Saturday (today) in the final at 3:30pm Pakistan Standard Time. The match is expected to be a thrilling contest between two of the strongest teams in the tournament. Notably, Pakistan has already secured qualification for the FIVB U17 World Championship 2026, a historic milestone for the country's youth volleyball development. The Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF) lauds the team's phenomenal effort, discipline, and growing international stature, and extends gratitude to all the fans, stakeholders, and sponsors supporting the team on this journey. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2556701/pak-storms-into-the-final-of-asian-u16-volleyball

‘Putting yourself in this room today,” booms Mel Robbins from the stage of a sold-out London theatre, “is a decision that’s going to change the trajectory of your life.” Rows and rows of (almost exclusively) women gaze at the podcaster and self-help superstar, her image on a huge screen behind her. It’s the final day of Robbins’s first tour, this one to promote her latest book and viral sensation, The Let Them Theory – her tool for helping people detach from other people’s dramas. Outside forces, she teaches, from annoying relatives to strangers in a traffic jam, are not in your control; nor are you responsible for what they do, feel or think (so long as they are not your children). It’s a waste of time, energy and emotion to even try. Instead, you should just say to yourself: “Let them.” Robbins is bounding around, sparkling with charisma and no-nonsense charm, first in a comfy tracksuit (available from her website for £150), then in boss-lady blazer and sexy denim. For nearly two hours, she commands the stage – occasionally joined by her two grown-up daughters, one of whom, Sawyer, is the book’s co-author – and the women in the audience smile, nod, hug each other and cry. By the finale, when the confetti cannons go off and yellow ribbons rain down to Coldplay’s booming A Sky Full of Stars, I have promised myself I will (in no particular order) lose my perimenopause tummy, be nicer to my children and care less what other people think. I am, I decide, beaming to myself, ready to change the trajectory of my life. Three days before I was fully indoctrinated into the cult of Mel Robbins, when I still had some semblance of cynicism and didn’t have phrases such as “You have everything you need inside you to make it” flashing across my brain like ticker tape, I meet her in a London cafe. Robbins has flown in this morning, but you wouldn’t know it. The qualities that make her such a good podcast host – warmth, energy, People, she argues, mostly need encouragement. “I think that’s the number one thing in people’s way,” she says, untouched iced coffee in front of her. “This sense of discouragement: my life is [CENSORED]ed, so nothing I do is going to matter, or I’m too old, or I’m too late, or too this.” This is where Robbins comes in, and it seems to work. The 56-year-old has a huge, cultish following. Her podcast has had more than 200m downloads, she has 10m Instagram followers and Let Them has sold 5m copies since it was published in December. Mel Robbins greets fans on the second night of her sold-out Let Them tour in May. Meeting them, she says, is ‘just a reminder that I’m reaching normal people trying to get up every day and do a little better’. Photograph: Scott Eisen/Getty Images for Mel Robbins She has celebrity stans, including Chrissy Teigen and Davina McCall, who called her the “queen of beginning again”. Oprah has anointed her, saying, “I have over the years read probably thousands of books. And Let Them is by far just one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read. It is right up there with all the greats … saying everything I was trying to say for 25 years.” If you have spent any time on Instagram, Robbins will probably have been served up to you at some point, face framed by blond hair and heavy-rimmed black glasses, to dispense some no-nonsense advice. Someone may have sent you one of her podcast episodes, in which she interviews renowned doctors and professors, such as the Harvard psychiatrist and happiness expert Robert Waldinger or the orthopaedic surgeon Vonda Wright (though not all guests are so rational – at least one medium has appeared). Other shows might find Robbins spending an easy hour talking about herself and the lessons she has learned about everything from diet and relationships to boosting confidence and setting boundaries. Even if you don’t know her name, you have probably been touched by her rules for empowered life. Maybe people have begun saying “let them” around you when they’re frustrated by friends’ behaviour, or used the five-second rule (counting down from five before doing something uncomfortable) or high-fiving themselves in the mirror before breakfast – blame Robbins for all of that. She is the ultimate in personal brand-building – a lawyer turned motivational speaker who, according to legend, dragged herself out of an $800,000 debt to become a star of the advice economy in her 50s. She wanted to do the tour, she says, to look her audience in the eye. “It’s just a reminder that who I’m reaching are normal people trying to get up every day and do a little better. I’m not trying to reach people who want to be billionaires.” Does she feel like a rock star, soaking up the adulation? “I don’t think about that,” she insists. “When you have something this extraordinary happen this late in life, you’re very clear about what matters – my family and my friends, and I’m mostly driven by the impact that I can make.” The uglier I look on social, the better the content does. I don’t even think about it as being vulnerable. To me, it’s just easier to be honest Self-development is huge, from questionable wellbeing influencers to any number of writers and podcasters exploring what it takes to be healthy, happy and successful. What does it say about us, in the affluent west, that we all crave it? Are we all narcissists? “No,” Robbins says with a smile, “but we all have that self-centredness. I personally feel we’re so overoptimised for productivity, but what I also hope happens is that, in listening to podcasts and reading this book, you’re reminded of what’s actually important to you. Most of us focus on the wrong things for too long, and then we realise we didn’t spend the time we wish we had with our parents while they were here, and we realise we worked too many late nights at work and we didn’t spend time with our pets or our friends.” Is all this advice, overwhelmingly aimed at women, just another way to make them feel they need more, or to change, or be perfect? Robbins brushes over the question, saying, “I guess what I want women in particular to know is you have more power than you think.” She is sometimes criticised for not being a qualified psychologist or therapist, or for dispensing obvious or age-old advice, but that is to miss her talent – she has an ability in the way she distils and communicates information to mainline it straight to your brain. I know, because for years I’ve had her voice in my head in a way that few other wellbeing podcasters – and I’ve listened to them all at some point – take up residence. Robbins acknowledges that her insights aren’t necessarily new. “Everybody has said ‘let them’ a bazillion times,” she says. “This is stoicism. It’s radical acceptance. It’s the serenity prayer.” What is it about her saying it that makes people listen? She ponders for a second. “I think this is a moment. I’ve said to our team: we never would have been able to orchestrate something as extraordinary as the timing of this – a modern twist on a timeless rule of life, for a moment where it feels like the Earth is spinning off its axis. All of the things that have lined up, I don’t feel that it’s me; I feel in service of something bigger.” As a child growing up in Michigan, Robbins wanted to be a doctor like her father (her mother ran a kitchenware shop). Was she a confident teenager? “I think people who knew me would say yes. What I would say is I was deeply anxious and insecure.” Her anxiety made her driven, she thinks, “but I wouldn’t call it confidence”. She “barely made it through” law school – she had undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD – but thrived in mock trials and oral argument. For three years, Robbins worked as a legal-aid criminal-defence lawyer in Manhattan, representing people who couldn’t afford to pay for representation. It taught her to develop intimacy fast. “The job is actually about trust, and building trust with somebody that didn’t pick you.” And it exposed her to people who had had extremely difficult lives. It was around the time New York City was being cleaned up, and with so many petty arrests to process, Robbins would often work in the night court. “When you’re representing somebody in a bail hearing, one of the things the judge considers is ties to community. Night after night, I would go into that courtroom, and I would call out for family or friends for this person, and no one was there. It broke my heart.” Later, it would be the reason she ends her podcast with the words: “In case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you I love you.” By this time, Robbins had met her husband, Chris. When he got a place at business school in Boston, they moved. “I went to a large law firm and wanted to die,” she says. With four weeks of her maternity leave with her first child left, she reveals, “I had a mental breakdown and said, ‘I’m not doing that any more.’ An interesting thing about human beings is that when you have a defined problem, most of us are good at solving it. I found a new job the night before I was supposed to go back.” For the next few years, Robbins worked for tech startups and digital marketers, and wondered what to do with her life, so she hired a life coach, who suggested that actually Robbins would make a good coach herself. She loved it, and was good at it. She started a daily call-in radio show, Make It Happen With Mel Robbins, and a newspaper column, and was already laying the foundations of her empire: there was a development deal with Disney, and books and a talkshow planned. In a 2007 magazine profile, Robbins, then in her late 30s, sounds hyper, talking up everything about herself – her sex life and marriage, her body, her work. Call it hubris. Within a couple of years her husband’s business was struggling, leaving them $800,000 in debt. How did she cope? “I wanted to kill him. I’m serious. I wanted to absolutely kill him. Those moments when things go off the rails in your life, it’s easier to be angry than it is to be afraid, and I could tell he was afraid, which just made me even angrier, because I felt fearful that we’d never get out of the situation.” She felt incapacitated for about six months, she says. “I drank myself into the ground. I was a ***** every time he was around. I withdrew from my friends. I didn’t tell my parents what was going on.” She lost a long-term coaching job. “I felt, how can I possibly give anybody advice when my life looks like this? I’m not even an impostor; I’m just a liar. And so my whole life kind of collapsed.” Blame seemed the obvious response. “And then you avoid doing what you really could be doing. It goes back to what we were talking about: discouragement. I believed at that moment, at 41 with three kids under the age of 10, and liens on the house and no income coming in, that I would never get out of this.” It was in this state, slumped in front of the TV and seeing an advert that used images of a rocket launch, that Robbins had the idea that, instead of staying in bed the next morning, she would count down from five and launch herself out of it. It worked for other things – the idea being that if you give yourself more than five seconds, you will talk yourself out of doing something difficult or hard. In 2011, Robbins, who was still earning a living as a coach and motivational speaker, and had just published her first book, Stop Saying You’re Fine, was invited by a friend to speak at a Tedx event in San Francisco. “That was like a 21-minute-long panic attack,” she says with a laugh. She didn’t intend to make her “five-second rule” a thing, but she blurted it out towards the end. The video went viral (it has now had more than 33m views), then she published her second book, based on the “rule”, in 2017. Her next book, The High 5 Habit – essentially, high-five yourself in the mirror in the morning, setting a plan for the day, boosting confidence and silencing your inner critic – became a bestseller, and in 2022 Robbins launched her podcast. It’s in this arena that Robbins, by talking about overcoming adversity, feels infinitely more relatable. In her episodes on trauma, she has described being sexually abused by an older child while on a family holiday, around the age of 10. She has also talked about the impact of getting a later-life ADHD diagnosis, and issues her husband and three children have gone through; part of her live show is about how she improved her relationship with her eldest child. How does she feel about using her personal life and trauma in her work? “It’s easier than hiding it,” she says. “So many of us are putting on a front, yet every one of us is going through something. I feel that sharing, like any good friend does with another friend – that’s a way to make all of this scientific research relatable and understandable.” When she’s more open or vulnerable, is listener engagement greater? “Here’s what I do know – the uglier I look on social, the better the content does,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t even think about it as being vulnerable. To me, it’s just easier to be honest. When you feel like you can’t disclose something, you’re judging yourself. Being free with your history and what you’ve learned from it means you don’t judge, and you don’t have shame around what’s happened to you.” If Robbins was successful before, her Let Them theory has taken that to another level. Essentially, it’s simple: if you spend too much time worrying about what other people do or say, which you can’t control anyway, you’re giving them too much power. Focus on yourself. It isn’t about being a doormat, or about resignation, she says. “When you say, ‘let them’, you’re not allowing anybody to do anything. You’re recognising what people are doing, and what’s in your control and what’s not.” In a culture obsessed with positive thinking, can letting go be a radical act? This is only the first stage in the process. One problem with saying “let them”, she acknowledges, is that it can put you in a position of judgment and superiority. “That’s why it works, because when you feel superior, that unhooks you from the frustration or hurt you may feel.” But if that’s all you do, she warns, you can end up isolating yourself. “At some point you’ve got to use the ‘let me’ part. I think what keeps you from becoming an asshole and cutting people out of your life is: let me decide what I’m going to do in response.” Maybe that will be accepting you’re the sibling who always checks in, or the friend who invariably makes the plans. “Maybe, conversely, you’re going to realise: I’ve been chasing these people all this time; they don’t give me anything in return. Is this what I deserve? Maybe I should pour my time into creating other types of relationships.” That’s the harder part. But, Robbins adds, “If all people want to do is say, ‘let them’, then let them.” How has her theory changed her life? “I had no idea how much I allowed the outside world and meaningless bullshit to penetrate me and my peace, whether it was traffic or people walking slowly, or somebody who didn’t text me back when I thought they should, or somebody’s mood.” Applying her tactic helped, she says, “to let them have their emotions and opinions, and then remind myself: what do I want to think about this? What do I want or not want to do?”. Robbins’s style can be quite tough. “You think I’m tough?” Forthright, then. “I think I’m honest,” she says. In her book, she writes that, if you’re stuck in a job you hate, “the harsh truth is you’re the one to blame – because you are choosing to stay in a job that makes you miserable”. Doesn’t that underestimate the reality for people who don’t have the privilege of walking into another job? “You always have options,” Robbins says. “You may not have options tomorrow, but you have options. Even if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you are sleeping on a friend’s couch, if you believe there are no other options, you won’t look for them. It is important to recognise that, with time and consistent effort, you can create different options.” We’re in a moment, she says, “where the headlines are terrifying, economies are faltering, AI is coming, jobs are redundant. You don’t know if you’re going to get laid off.” That’s beyond your control, she says. “Say: let them lay you off. You’re recognising it could happen, and reminding yourself to not waste time and energy worrying, feeling like a loser, feeling like you’ve got no options. So let me, every day after work, spend an hour getting my résumé together, networking and doing what I need to do to build skills. You will feel empowered when you focus on what’s in your control, and what’s in your control is what you put your time and energy into.” It can be applied to big or small things. Robbins describes herself as a “very political person”. “If we’re ever going to get things back on track in terms of people feeling stability and peace and support, you can’t burn through all your energy feeling powerless. You’ve got to remind yourself: I actually have the power to change this. If it bothers me, the more energy I spend arguing about it and venting about it Photograph: Scott Eisen/Getty Images for Mel Robbins With Robbins’s increased success and profile has come, inevitably, more criticism. How does she deal with that? “Let them,” she says instantly. Does it not hurt when she reads horrible comments about herself online? “No.” She doesn’t look, anyway – people who are intent on misunderstanding aren’t her problem, she adds. Does she think male podcasters get an easier time? “Yes – no question. Absolutely.” One of the persistent allegations is that Robbins plagiarised “let them” from a poem that went viral in 2022. She has always said she hadn’t seen the poem and her inspiration came from the night she was trying to micromanage her 18-year-old son’s school prom, and her middle child, her daughter Kendall, told her in a moment of exasperation to “let them” – get soaked in the rain, have tacos if they want them, just let them. “Anybody that can’t see that a poem is very different than a book that makes a case for a theory, with an 18-page bibliography, doesn’t want to see, and doesn’t understand the word plagiarism either,” Robbins says. I agree it’s a fairly weak criticism, as is the complaint that she has stretched a basic idea into a whole book (and now tour) – something that could be applied to just about every self-help book ever written. Her podcast remains free and, unlike many other motivational “influencers”, she doesn’t flog online courses, or supplements. I take more issue with some of the oversimplistic things she says: “Success, love, happiness, money, friendship – these things are in limitless supply,” said the multimillionaire Mel Robbins to the billionaire Oprah Winfrey, on the latter’s podcast. ‘Let them’: can this viral self-help mantra change your life? Robbins says she follows her own rules “about 90% of the time”. When she’s at home in Vermont, she gets up around 6am, makes her bed, “so I don’t crawl back into it”, and high-fives herself in the mirror. She might take a bite of a banana, “because of what Dr Stacy Sims said about cortisol and women never working out fasted”. Sims, a physiologist and one of her podcast guests, says that, for women, exercising on an empty stomach means burning lean muscle and holding on to fat. “I was like: mother[CENSORED], we’ve been gaslit by the fitness industry. It’s incredible what she shared about women not being little men.” Robbins walks her dogs to get her early sunlight (it helps with the circadian rhythm), drinks water before her coffee, has breakfast. She has a regular walking group with friends. She likes to cook, so she’ll start prepping dinner when she does lunch, then it’s bath and bed not long after 9pm. “I’m so [CENSORED] old,” she says with a laugh. “But I love my sleep.” In the middle of it all is work. She wants, she says, to be an example “of leaning into new things and reinventing myself over and over, and clawing our way out of debt in our 40s. There’s so much you can do.” Robbins, similarly to Oprah, controls her empire. “I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m pissed off about the deal I made, and if I’m in control of what happens, the only person I can truly be mad at is me.” Is she a life coach or a media mogul? “I’m just your friend, Mel,” she says with a bright smile. A few days later, on stage, Robbins is so overcome with emotion, she can barely get her last words out: “I love you, I do, and I believe in you.” There are cheers and whoops, and that blast of confetti and Coldplay, and we leave on a high. I chat to two women, in their 40s, who had been sitting behind me, emotional at points; one has a delicate tattoo on her arm of a dandelion releasing its seeds and the words “Let them … Let me”. They love Robbins, says Eva (with the tattoo), “because she’s so normal. She’s been through stuff like all of us have, but she’s got grit and determination, and she’s an example that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.” Her friend Hayley says the years and the struggles since the pandemic have left her feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. “I know that I need to make a change,” she says, eyes shining. “She makes you believe you can do it.” The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is published by Hay House UK at £22.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Her podcast is available here. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/19/mel-robbins-self-help-superstar-success-survival-silencing-critics

In Gaza, being a helpful, loving child can be a death sentence. Heba al-Ghussain’s nine-year-old son, Karam, was killed by an Israeli airstrike because he went to fetch water for the family, and her 10-year-old daughter, Lulu, was killed because she went to give Karam a hand. The siblings were waiting beside a water distribution station, holding jerry cans and buckets, when it was bombed last Sunday, killing six children and four adults and injuring 19 others, mostly children. Both Lulu and Karam died instantly, torn apart by the force of the blast and so disfigured that their father prevented Heba from seeing their bodies. “They didn’t allow me to say goodbye or even look at them one last time,” she said. “One of my brothers hugged me, trying to block the scene from me as he cried and tried to comfort me. After that, I don’t remember anything. I lost touch with reality.” Father grieves over bodies of children killed in airstrike - video Lulu’s real name was Lana but her parents rarely used it because her nickname, which means pearl, captured the gentle shine she brought to family life. “She had such a joyful personality, and a heart full of kindness,” Heba said. Karam was smart, always top of his class until Israeli attacks shut down Gaza’s schools, generous and mature beyond his years. His dad, Ashraf al-Ghussain, called him “abu sharik” or “my partner”, because he seemed “like a man in spirit”. But he was also enough of a child to be obsessed by a remote-controlled car that he begged his mother to buy. She regrets telling him they needed to save money for food. “I wish I had spent everything I had to buy it for him so he could have played with it before he died.” Lulu al-Ghussain (left) with her elder sister. Photograph: Supplied Both children also dreamed of the day Israel would lift its blockade of Gaza, so they could taste chocolate, instant noodles and their mum’s best dishes. For Lulu that was the Palestinian chicken dish musakhan, for Karam, shawarma. “They had all kinds of food plans for me to prepare,” Heba said. Israel imposed a total siege for 11 weeks starting in March that brought Gaza to the brink of famine, and the very limited food, fuel and medical supplies allowed in since May have not relieved extreme hunger. Unprecedented malnutrition is killing children, and preventing injured people recovering, a British doctor working there said this week. Trying to get food has been a deadly gamble for months, with more than 800 people killed since late May in near daily attacks by Israeli soldiers using weapons including tank shells and navy cannon to target desperate crowds near food distribution points. Trying to get clean water is also a struggle. Nearly two years of Israeli attacks have destroyed water treatment plants and pipe networks. In June Unicef warned that Gaza faces a human-made drought and that without fuel to operate remaining stations children could start dying of thirst. But until Sunday, there had not been any mass killings of people trying to collect water. The al-Ghussains sent their children to collect supplies for the family because they thought it was less dangerous than searching for food. Children wait to fill water bottles at a distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Aid groups brought water in trucks to fill tanks at a water distribution station just a few streets away from the school where the family sought shelter after their own home was bombed. Karam would wait there in the sweltering heat for his turn at taps that often ran dry. “I had no choice but to send them,” Heba said. “Many times, my son would go and wait for his turn, sometimes for an hour, only to end up with nothing because the water would run out before it reached everyone.” When he did get water, it was only 20 litres, very little for a family of seven but a heavy weight for a young boy. “Karam was only nine years old and braver than dozens of men. He carried it without tiring or complaining.” Karam al-Ghussain. Photograph: Supplied The long queues meant that Heba was not too worried when she heard the water station was hit. Her son left home not long before the bombing, so she assumed he would still have been at the back of a waiting crowd, some distance from the blast. As it turned out the queue was relatively small when he arrived, a stroke of fatally bad luck that probably delighted Karam in his last few minutes. It meant that when the bomb hit, he and his sister were right beside water station. “When Lulu woke up, I told her to go help her brother carry the water containers. It was as if the missile was waiting for her to arrive to strike that place,” Heba said. Ali Abu Zaid, 36, was one of the first on the scene, rushing to help survivors. As the dust and smoke cleared they revealed a horrific tableau. “Each child was holding a water bucket, lying dead in place, covered in their own blood. The shrapnel had torn through their small bodies and disfigured their faces. The smell of gunpowder filled the area,” he said. People started loading the dead and injured on to donkey carts, as medical teams were slow to arrive, but there was nothing doctors could do for most of the victims. “Even if the ambulances had got there sooner, it wouldn’t have made a difference. There was no saving anyone, these were lifeless bodies, The aftermath of the airstrike on the water distribution point in Nuseirat. Photograph: Reuters Ashraf raced to look for his children as soon as he heard the blast, but arrived after their bodies had been taken away to find only blood-stained water containers scattered on the street, and a terrifying silence. So he headed to hospital to continue the search, where he found their battered bodies laid out on the floor, and collapsed over them in grief. He married in his 30s, late for Gaza, and when his children arrived they became his world. Karam and Lulu’s brutal deaths have shattered him. “When I saw them like that, I felt as if my heart was being stabbed with knives,” he said. “I’m still in shock. I’ve become constantly afraid of losing the rest of my family and being left alone. I feel as if I’m going to lose my mind.” View image in fullscreen Lulu (left) and Karam (right) with their father, Ashraf al-Ghussain, and their two other siblings. Photograph: Supplied Heba also went to look for Lulu and Karam at the water station but then headed back to the shelter, hoping to find them waiting with their dad. Perhaps she had learned a kind of grim optimism from previous brushes with death. The siblings had been rescued from the rubble of their home when an airstrike brought it down on top of them earlier in the war, and survived injuries after another bomb hit nearby. That streak would not last. “They survived twice, but not the third time,” Heba said. Word of the children’s fate had reached the school, but even in Gaza, where no family has escaped tragedy, the scale of Heba’s loss was shocking. “The news of their martyrdom was already spreading, but no one told me,” she said. “No one dared to deliver such terrible news.” Instead they encouraged her to go look for them among the injured in al-Awda hospital. There she found her husband, and the shattered bodies of their beloved son and daughter, so full of life just a couple of hours earlier. Israel’s military blamed the strike on a “malfunction” that caused a bomb targeting a militant to fall short and hit the children, and said it Abandoned water bottles where Karam and Lulu were killed. Photograph: Reuters Ashraf questioned this. “They have the most advanced technology and know exactly where the missile will fall and who the target is. How could this be a mistake? A ‘mistake’ that killed both of my children!” The family couldn’t afford a burial plot for the children, so they interred them beside Heba’s father. They worry they may have to reopen the grave again for the youngest of their three surviving children if aid to civilians does not increase. At 18 months, Ghina is malnourished and has skin rashes because the family cannot afford nappies and don’t have enough water to wash her. “We sleep hungry and wake up hungry, and thirsty, too, with the desalination stations barely operating,” Heba said. “The entire world sees everything, yet they close their eyes as if they don’t.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/19/killing-of-young-siblings-at-gaza-water-point-shows-seeking-lifes-essentials-now-a-deadly-peril

Developer Respawn Entertainment has released a new update for its hit battle royale hero shooter Apex Legends, bringing with it new balance changes impacting members of the playable cast. The changes could shift the Apex Legends competitive meta, as players adjust their tactics to account for the alterations to each character's behavior and stats. Now into its sixth year in operation, Apex Legends has seen a lot of changes since it first launched on the wave of po[CENSORED]rity for battle royale multiplayer shooters. Compared to genre leaders like Fortnite and (at the time), PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Apex Legends capitalized on developer Respawn Entertainment's experience creating fast movement-focused shooters like Titanfall and its sequel. The result was one of the best first-person co-op shooters on the market. Apex Legends also incorporated the unique elements of hero shooters, focusing gameplay around a collection of distinctive playable Legends with their own powers, abilities, and cosmetic upgrades. Respawn has also used the seasonal model to deliver new content and updates at a regular pace, as well as altering the game balance to ensure fair competition and shake up the meta. Apex Legends S25 Midseason Update Overview: Meta Changes, New Events, and More Respawn Entertainment reveals what Apex Legends can expect from the Season 25: Prodigy midseason update when it launches. Less than two weeks after the launch of a smaller Apex Legends patch updating several weapons, Respawn Entertainment delivered a new update with balance changes for characters Revenant, Ash, Ballistic, Alter, and Vantage. The most significant changes are for Revenant and Ash, who swapped classes. Revenant was shifted from Skirmisher class to Assault class, while Ash was changed to Skirmisher from Assault. Alter, Ballistic, Vantage, and Wattson also received tweaks to their abilities. Aside from the changes to their respective classes, Revenant and Ash also received changes to their abilities. Ash had the maximum range on her Ultimate nerfed, along with her Charged Knock ability replaced with the deathbox-revealing Marked for Death. Revenant had the maximum and minimum velocity on his pounce changed, reducing its top speed, while having ground detection improved to speed his guns. Revenant was the subject of multiple reworks over the years, seeing changes to his abilities on several occasions. Revenant was even removed from Apex Legends temporarily to fix an exploit involving his ultimate. Following the recent rework of Alter in Apex Legends, Respawn opted to nerf her portals further, increasing the time the chase portal remains open and giving Alter access to Controller perks via the Controller of Worlds upgrade. Ballistic can no longer use Tempest to speed boost his allies and had tactical charges reduced from 2 to 1. In reaction to the news, players mostly celebrated the nerfs to Alter, Ash, and Ballistic, with some expressing the hope to see fewer full teams consisting only of those characters. Some players also celebrated the fixing of a bug that allowed players to see through Bangalore's smokescreens. Bangalore smoke barriers are a major part of her Apex Legends kit, so the bug made her "useless" for some players until it was fixed. With luck and time, players will find the balance changes satisfactory. Apex Legends July 2025 Patch Notes General Gameplay A fix for Training Mode failing to connect the first or second time. Resolved an issue with players being able to see through Bangalore Smoke. Fixed players respawning with grenades instead of primary weapons in hand in Mixtape modes. Vantage’s Passive Spotter’s Lens did not accurately display the number of targeted shields of an enemy team. When aiming down sights with the Bocek, Sparrow's position was unnatural-looking compared to the rest of the Legends. Resolved the PlayStation logos overlapping with Battle Pass information. Improvements for pathing from bot players. Fixed the Event Store Button leading to the wrong events. Balance Changes Ash Legend Class: Changed to Skirmisher. Ultimate: Max distance reduced from 100m to 75m. Upgrade: Charged Knock Replaced with Marked for Death, reveals enemy deathboxes on your map. Alter Increased time for knocked allies to use portal by 1s. Friends upgrade replaced with Controller of Worlds, gives access to Controller perks. Increased chase portal open duration from 8.0s to 10.0s. Decreased portal warning time from 3.5s to 2.5s. Ballistic Tempest no longer gives speed boost to allies (Ballistic still has it). Base tactical charges reduced from 2 to 1. Vantage Ultimate: Laser duration reduced from 15s to 10s. Upgrade: Sniper Cover gunshield HP increased from 40 to 75 and VFX color updated. Wattson Upgrade: Ultimate Conductor knock burst increased from 30% to 50% Ultimate charge https://gamerant.com/apex-legends-july-2025-update-patch-notes/

This week, a new expansion launched for Destiny 2. The Edge of Fate marks the start of a brand new saga—and ushers in a major overhaul to some key systems, seemingly aimed at making the game more accessible for newcomers and more sticky for its remaining playerbase. In theory, then, this should be a big moment—a new adventure, and a shot in the arm for an aging shooter. In reality, things look very different. Anecdotally, where once my Steam friends list would be a grid of green squares each new Destiny expansion—lapsed players jumping back in to get a fresh taste of Bungie's still peerless gunplay—The Edge of Fate was met with indifference. And the numbers seem to back up my experience. The two previous Destiny 2 expansions, Lightfall and The Final Shape, peaked at over 300,000 concurrent Steam players on the day of their launch. The Edge of Fate? It topped out at 99,193. That is, by some distance, the lowest Steam concurrent count for any Destiny 2 expansion. Hell, even Into the Light—the free update designed to tide players over after The Final Shape was delayed—peaked at over 122,000 players when it released. The Edge of Fate will be the biggest change to Destiny 2 since it launched—an injection of fresh ideas, but also of ARPG grind 'In a very interesting way, it actually reduces the work': Destiny 2's director explains why reinventing the wheel with The Edge of Fate was actually the easier option Destiny 2 just got weird: Launch trailer leans hard into time travel and looks more like a Control crossover As always when it comes to Steam concurrents, there are some caveats to note, not least of which is that—as a multiplatform game—these players represent only a portion of the overall playerbase; albeit likely a representative one. It's also worth noting that pre-loads for The Edge of Fate started much later than previous expansions—around five hours before launch instead of the usual 24 hours. But even with a 100gb update potentially blocking players from firing up the game on release date, I'd be surprised if it was the sole reason for 200,000 fewer players jumping into the game. Especially when its second day concurrents dropped a similar percentage to previous expansion launches. No, I think the reasons are more wide-ranging and deep seated than just inconvenience—a series of self-inflicted bungles that have compounded together into a problem that I don't know if Bungie can even solve. Few of them actually have anything to do with whether or not this expansion is any good—I've certainly been enjoying the campaign more than I expected. Rather, it feels like the sins of the past In June 2024, Bungie launched The Final Shape expansion, one of the most critically acclaimed releases in Destiny's history. Let's look at some of the things that have happened since. July 2024: Bungie lays off 220 developers August 2024: Some of the affected developers express frustration at the allegation that Bungie's CEO, Pete Parsons, spent $2,414,550 on vintage cars. Parsons' car collection goes on to become a meme among dissatisfied players in Destiny 2's community May 2025: Stolen art assets are discovered in Marathon. This marks the fourth time someone else's art has ended up in an official Bungie June 2025: Marathon is delayed following an underwhelming alpha test There's a quote that's always stuck with me. It came from a Bungie developer who spoke anonymously to IGN following a round of layoffs back in 2023. "It feels like many higher ups aren't listening to the data and are like, 'We just need to win our fans back, they still like us.'" And yet if you look at Destiny 2's community, that couldn't be further from the truth. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. I'm not sure Bungie's stock as a studio has ever been lower, and it can't help but have an effect on its community, because it feeds into a narrative of doomerism that makes investing your time and energy into something feel all the more precarious, and at worst, even foolish. The vibes are bad, and they've metastasized into severe distrust of Bungie and its actions. There's a default assumption that every decision that's made is to be viewed with suspicion—at best incompetence, at worst a blatant attempt to pump player engagement numbers at the expense of making something fun. Whatever the truth—and to be clear there have been many questionable design decisions made over the years—there is next to zero willingness to trust in what Bungie is doing behind the scenes. Worse, there's an almost fervent glee around the chance to actively dunk on the game. It's a special kind of negativity that can infect a live service game, as players notice how heavily negativity, memes and hot takes are rewarded by the various social algorithms and compete to get noticed. The problems are there, sure, but they're heightened to the extreme—to the point that, before The Edge of Fate launched, multiple streamers publicly crashed out over the toxicity within the community. Closing the vault Even if Bungie could turn community sentiment around—already a Herculean task—it has an arguably bigger problem to tackle. This far into its life, Destiny 2 is still burdened by its history of unpo[CENSORED]r compromises and questionable design decisions, and its overall po[CENSORED]rity up to now has perhaps masked just how disastrous some of them have been. I could relitigate years of nerfs, sweeping design changes and U-turns, all of which chipped away at the community's trust and faith. But all of them would pale in comparison to the effect of one single change. In 2020, with the release of Beyond Light, Bungie 'launched' the Destiny Content Vault—a classic bit of corporate double-speak that described the decision to remove a handful of older destinations, raids and campaigns from the game. From a development standpoint, the reasons Bungie gave for this act made a sort of sense. This was stuff that, really, only a tiny percentage of people were playing. And it made testing and implementing new sandbox changes all the more difficult. But players by and large don't care about changes designed to make a development team's lives easier, and honestly, shouldn't be expected to. While some people accepted the compromise and continued to play, others—both veterans and potential new players—saw it as a cardinal sin. Bungie removed campaigns and activities that people had paid money for—a radical action that some players can never forgive even now. Especially now, in an era where movements like Stop Killing Games are picking up so much attention. Go to any article about Destiny written in the last five years, and inevitably there are a number of people in the comments reminding everyone that this was the game that deleted its launch campaign. By and large people haven't forgotten, and seemingly haven't forgiven. A sense of an end It puts the pressure on Bungie to retain the audience they do have. Unfortunately for the studio, it made one big mistake here… It made The Final Shape really good. Last year's expansion was a really satisfying conclusion to the game's story up to that point—an impressive feat given that the actual meat of it was seemingly created multiple years into the series' lifespan. Its end screen—as you sit quietly with your Ghost, overlooking the Traveler, the Witness finally defeated—felt like a proper conclusion. It felt like a really good moment to stop playing Destiny. As one dev once told PC Gamer's Tim Clark, in hindsight putting the word 'final' in the title was probably a mistake. It's a word that invites departure. I think many players were looking for an excuse to stop playing Destiny—either for the reasons above, or simply because everyone who's been playing since the series debuted is 10 years older now. There are only so many hours in the day you can spend grinding for area-denial grenade launchers. Bungie compounded the problem by not saying what was next. Sure, there were the post-expansion episodes—last year's replacement for the traditional seasonal model. But these were quickly revealed to be just seasons wearing a trenchcoat. Longer, sure, but no less disposable. It wasn't until a week after The Final Shape launched that Bungie revealed something was coming after the episodes were done. At the time, though, we didn't know what Codename: Frontiers—what would become this year's The Edge of Fate and Renegades expansions—actually was. A lot of people I spoke to just assumed The Final Shape was, as its name suggested, Destiny 2's last expansion. It was done. They were done. And a lot of them seemingly haven't come back. Here, at least, The Edge of Fate is partly at fault. Bungie has done a bad job of making this expansion sound essential. When The Final Shape was first announced, players were also pretty sceptical—Lightfall had been a disaster, and what Bungie showed seemed underwhelming for the final release of the saga. But then the studio announced the Prismatic subclass, and everything changed. Suddenly people were hyped again, because the allure of a new toy is hard to resist. I think Bungie has underestimated just how important some big new sandbox toy is to its playerbase. After all, a new campaign is a big showcase moment, but it's not what you actually spend most of your playtime doing. At least with a new subclass, you get a slightly different way to run the same activities that make up the rest of the game. Accepting fate No doubt the studio was aware there would be fewer people showing up this time around—it would certainly explain some of the choices made for both this release and the upcoming Renegades. A big Star Wars tie-in feels like an obvious attempt to garner interest outside of Destiny 2's core playerbase. Which is likely why Bungie is using The Edge of Fate to focus daily play around the new Portal—a single menu designed to feed new players obvious things to do. (Image credit: Bungie) At the other end of the experience curve, The Edge of Fate's new progression systems seem designed to squeeze more playtime out of the veteran players that do remain. Where once it felt like Bungie was on the cusp of doing away with the leveling curve altogether, now it's back with a vengeance. And where crafting gave players a guaranteed way to secure the guns they wanted after a certain amount of investment, now the weapon grind has been supercharged with multiple tiers of random rolls. Which is what companies do when their game's playerbase falls. Mitigate lower turnout by squeezing more hours and attention out of those who remain. For some, this will no doubt work. But it's a big risk to take for an already dwindling community—especially one that's already had a taste of how much more convenient the game's progression could be. With two expansions a year, we've probably left the era where any one single Destiny 2 release will spike player count to anything near the levels it did before. The interesting question going forward is whether The Edge of Fate's new systems will stem the flow, or if things will look even more dire as a direct result of its changes. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/with-steam-launch-concurrents-at-an-all-time-low-for-destiny-2s-latest-expansion-i-think-bungie-is-finally-paying-the-price-for-years-of-mistakes-the-biggest-being-the-time-it-removed-paid-content/

Redmi 15C could launch in select global markets soon. An online retailer seems to have listed the handset, showing its design and key features. The phone is expected to succeed the Redmi 14C, which was unveiled in some regions in August 2024. As per the listing, the phone is expected to get a MediaTek Helio G81 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM, a 6,000mAh battery, and a 50-megapixel dual rear camera unit. The design appears to be similar to the previously leaked images of the handset. Redmi 15C Price, Colour Options (Expected) The Redmi 15C price in select European countries, including Italy, could start at EUR 133.90 (roughly Rs. 13,400) for the 4GB + 128GB option, according to a listing on Epto.it. The higher 4GB + 256GB variant could be priced at EUR 154.90 (roughly Rs. 15,500). The phone is listed in Mint Green, Moonlight Blue, Midnight Grey, and Twilight Orange shades. Redmi 15C Features, Specifications (Expected) The Redmi 15C will likely sport a 6.9-inch LCD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. It is expected to be powered by a MediaTek Helio G81 SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM and up to 256GB of onboard storage. The phone runs on Xiaomi's HyperOS, as per the listing. Redmi 15C Design Renders Leaked; Appears on NBTC Site Alongside Poco C85 For optics, the Redmi 15C likely has a dual rear camera unit including an AI-backed 50-megapixel main sensor alongside a 13-megapixel selfie shooter. It will likely pack a 6,000mAh battery with support for 33W wired fast charging. Connectivity options for the Redmi 15C are expected to include 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi, NFC, GPS and a USB Type-C port. The handset may measure 173.16x81.07x8.2mm in size and could weigh 205g. For security, it could have a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. Redmi Turbo 5 Pro Tipped to Pack a Large 8,000mAh Battery According to listings on po[CENSORED]r certification sites, the Redmi 15C may also be rebranded as the Poco C85. The handsets may launch in July or later this year. https://www.gadgets360.com/mobiles/news/redmi-15c-price-expected-specifications-leak-launch-8902330

Netflix used AI-generated visual effects for the first time in a TV show or movie this year, and co-CEO Ted Sarandos is pretty pleased with the result. Speaking to investors on Thursday (July 18), Sarandos revealed Argentinian sci-fi show, The Eternaut, is the first Netflix production to use AI to generate a VFX (visual effects) sequence. He said: "The creators were thrilled with the result. We were thrilled with the result," he said. "And more importantly, the audience was thrilled with the result. So, I think these tools are helping creators expand the possibilities of storytelling on screen, and that is endlessly exciting." Your Netflix home page is getting its biggest update ever, and yes, it includes generative AI The Oscars’ new AI rule provides a tentative green light for generative tech in movies This movie is fully AI-generated and has a fully SAG-AFTRA cast – here’s 3 things you need to know about Echo Hunter The scene in question shows a building collapse in Buenos Aires after coming into contact with toxic snowfall, and according to Sarandos, given the budget of the show, the scale of the effects needed to pull off the scene wouldn't have been possible without the use of AI. In fact, Sarandos even confirmed that using AI was not only a cost-saver, but incredibly efficient too. "That VFX sequence was completed 10 times faster than it could have been completed with visual, traditional VFX tools and workflows," he said. Considering just how happy Netflix's head honcho and the creators behind The Eternaut are with the results, the Argentinian-made TV series could be the pioneer in AI-generated Netflix effects, opening up opportunities for other productions to follow suit. Just the beginning Hollywood's disdain towards AI couldn't be more evident. After all, the technology was a huge point of contention in the Hollywood actors' and writers' strikes that plagued the entertainment industry in 2023. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Now, two years on, we're starting to see AI find its feet in the world of TV and movie production, and despite the negative connotations of the word, it might end up being a good thing for creators working on a smaller budget. Sarandos said: "This is real people doing real work with better tools. Our creators are already seeing the benefits in production through pre-visualisation and shot planning work, and certainly visual effects. I think these tools are helping creators expand the possibilities of storytelling on screen, and that is endlessly exciting.” Netflix reported a successful quarter, with over $11 billion in revenue, up nearly 20% compared to the previous year. I might be skeptical, but I'd expect this trial of using AI to generate scenes could spawn into a bigger beast if the profit margins are high enough to ride out any backlash. Using AI monitored by the creators of a show for a scene is one thing, but at what point does it cross the line? And when it does, will companies like Netflix scale back or go full steam ahead, implementing AI into all the best TV shows and movies? https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/netflix-uses-generative-ai-vfx-in-a-show-for-the-first-time-as-ceo-says-the-cost-just-wouldnt-have-been-feasible-for-a-show-on-that-budget

AMD's latest flagship processor for workstations — the 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX — is a whopping 73% faster than its predecessor in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, according to unofficial information published by Chiphell. AMD's 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX reportedly scored 173,452 points in the multi-core Cinebench R23 benchmark, which is around 73% higher compared to 100,291 points scored by its predecessor, the 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX. Chiphell does not disclose specifications of the testbed it or its source used, so we have no idea whether the processor was cooled using a stock cooling system, or something more extreme. Both CPUs feature a 2.50 GHz base clock, but the new processor is based on the Zen 5 microarchitecture and can burst up to 5.40 GHz, whereas its ancestor is running the Zen 4 microarchitecture and can turbo to 5.10 GHz. The latest Zen 5 microarchitecture has a noticeable (11% - 25%) instructions per clock (IPC) performance uplift compared to Zen 4, and AMD's official benchmarks of the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX show that it is 13% - 26% faster than its predecessor, depending on the workload. So a 73% performance uplift in Cinebench R23 seems quite unrealistic. Latest Videos From Tom's Hardware AMD's 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX benchmark results listed in Geekbench database New AMD Ryzen Threadripper smashes PassMark record AMD Announces Threadripper HEDT and Pro 9000-Series CPUs: 96 cores and 192 threads for Desktops and Workstations Perhaps, Chiphell's source used a very sophisticated cooling system and increased TDP in the motherboard's BIOS to make the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX CPU achieve higher clocks and therefore deliver substantially higher performance than its predecessor. For example, the previous-generation Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX CPU hit 167,309 points in Cinebench R23 while being overclocked to around 5.0 GHz and cooled using a liquid cooling system. Alternatively, the result means that the new Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX has certain enhancements that greatly improve its multi-thread performance, which AMD kept secret for some reason. This seems unlikely, though. It should be noted that 173,452 points in the multi-core Cinebench R23 benchmark isn't by any means world record. The world's highest results — 201,501 or 210,702 points in Cinebench R23 — was achieved by an overclocked Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX while it was cooled using liquid nitrogen. In any case, as soon as AMD's flagship Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX hits the market and becomes more or less widespread, we are going to learn more about its performance in real-world applications. Unfortunately, this might take a while, as the CPU is priced at $11,699. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amds-threadripper-9995wx-stuns-in-cinebench-r23-new-ryzen-flagship-reportedly-73-percent-faster-than-its-predecessor

Scientists have found that plants make a series of sounds that indicate they are under duress, and that certain animals have evolved to hear these and react to them. Described as a “vast, unexplored field,” the phytoacoustics are inaudible to the human hear, but adjusted to frequencies that we can hear, the sounds are not unlike the popping of corn in a pan. A genus of moths is known to lay its eggs on the leaves of the tomato vine so that the larvae have a ready food source when they emerge. Scientists at Tel Aviv University performed a series of trials to see if these moths would lay their eggs on plants which were sounding off that they were dehydrated or stressed in some way. The hypothesis would be that if moths could hear the sound, they may choose to avoid laying their eggs on the ‘screaming’ plants, as a stressed plant would produce fewer or inferior tomatoes, resulting in weaker, less-nourished larvae. The result was exactly that. When controlled for visual indicators on the leaves and fruit, moths reliably chose to lay eggs on the silent plants over the sounding ones. “This is the first demonstration ever of an animal responding to sounds produced by a plant,” said Professor Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University who co-led the project. “This is a vast, unexplored field—an entire world waiting to be discovered.” Dr. Yovel has made other foundational discoveries in plant signaling, including that stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be recorded from a distance and classified, and another that showed plants ‘hear’ the sounds of pollinators nearby and rapidly increase the sugar concentration in their nectar. On the back of this most recent paper, he plans to extend his research to make a catalogue of sounds from different plants, and begin to see how many, if any, animals are reacting to them. “This is speculation at this stage, but it could be that all sorts of animals will make decisions based on the sounds they hear from plants, such as whether to pollinate or hide inside them or eat the plant,” said Dr. Yovel according to the BBC. Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists With all this talk about screaming plants and listening plants, the authors stressed that plants are not sentient as we understand it. The sounds are made by changes in the physical structure of leaves, not by compression and mani[CENSORED]tion of air, the beating of extremities against other body parts, or any other vocalizations that we know of in the animal kingdom. Others are slightly more convinced, however, such as forester and author Peter Wohlleben, who is eager to see when scientists can devise a computer which detects through pheromones what trees are ‘talking’ about. His work indicates this is a primary means of tree communication. Plants Respond to Touch Sending Different Signals Through Their Cells, Shows New Study Whether or not science is on the cusp of elaborating plant ‘intelligence,’ it’s undeniable that there is a virtually universal plant ‘awareness’ which if we’re honest, isn’t always an inferior quality to intelligence. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/animals-react-to-secret-sounds-from-plants-that-we-couldnt-hear-until-now/

KARACHI: The cricket boards of Pakistan and the West Indies have found themselves at odds over the proposal to convert three scheduled One-Day Internationals into T20 matches — a disagreement that could result in Pakistan cancelling the Caribbean leg of their tour. Pakistan is slated to play three T20Is against the West Indies in Lauderhill, Florida on August 1, 3 and 4, followed by three ODIs in Tarouba on August 8, 10 and 12. However, the PCB has formally requested West Indies cricket board (CWI) to convert the ODIs into T20Is which could serve as preparation for next year's T20 World Cup. PCB Sources confirmed with Telecom Asia Sport (www.telecomasia.net) that CWI has been unwilling to accept the proposal. "The PCB wrote to CWI asking to switch the ODIs into T20Is, but they have neither replied nor shown any readiness to accommodate the request," one official revealed. Officials in the West Indies camp reportedly believe they stand a strong chance of defeating Pakistan in the ODI format — an opportunity to improve their current tenth-place ranking. Pakistan are currently fourth in ODIs, while the West Indies languish in ninth. The stakes are significant: the top eight teams in the ODI rankings, along with hosts South Africa and Zimbabwe, will secure direct qualification for the 2027 World Cup. West Indies, once the dominant force in one-day cricket, missed out on the 2023 World Cup in India and were forced to qualify for the 2019 edition through a play-off. "It has been a major setback for a side that won the first two ODI World Cups in 1975 and 1979, and finished runners-up in 1983 — all held in England," a source told www.telecomasia.net. West Indies administrators believe playing more ODIs against higher-ranked opponents is critical to regaining lost ground and securing automatic entry into the 2027 event. "They feel that if they can defeat Pakistan, it will significantly boost their ranking and improve their qualification prospects," the source added. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2556321/wc-stakes-fuel-pak-wi-scheduling-battle

From spending time by yourself to making the most of being single, flying solo can be fulfilling – a philosophy championed by a new wave of books. In Wim Wenders' recent film Perfect Days, the main character, a Tokyo toilet cleaner, spends many of his hours in solitude; watering plants, contemplating, listening to music and reading. While more characters are introduced as the film develops, for many viewers its earlier moments are, indeed, perfect; described by the BBC's own Nicholas Barber as a "meditation on the serenity of an existence stripped to its essentials", it really struck a chord. No wonder. Thoughtful and positive outlooks on solitude have been taking up more and more space on our screens, bookshelves and smartphones, from podcasts to viral TikToks. Seemingly, there's never been a better time to be alone. In the past couple of years, several titles on the topic have been released, with a few more in the works. Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, and Solo: Building a Remarkable Life of Your Own hit the shelves in 2024, and Nicola Slawson's Single: Living a Complete Life on Your Own Terms was published in February. Then last month saw the release of Emma Gannon's much-anticipated novel Table For One; having made her name with non-fiction books questioning traditional ideas of success and productivity, Gannon is now reconsidering modern relationships, in a love story focusing on a young woman finding joy in being alone, rather than with a partner. Courtesy of NEON Wim Wenders's 2023 film Perfect Days was praised for its meditative study of a man's solitary but content existence (Credit: Courtesy of NEON) Later this year, two more self-help guides, The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World and The Joy of Sleeping Alone, are coming out, as well as a paperback, English translation of Daniel Schreiber's Alone: Reflections on Solitary Living, which originally came out in Germany in 2021. Packed with keen observations and helpful tips, this new wave of books aims not only to destigmatise solitude, but also to make a case for its benefits and pleasures. Such a powerful stream of publications might come as a surprise, at first, to everyone who has lived through the pandemic and inevitably heard of – or got a bitter taste of – the so-called "loneliness epidemic", a term po[CENSORED]rised in 2023 by then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "Post pandemic, there [was] a huge focus on loneliness, for a really good reason," says Robert Coplan, a professor in psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa and author of The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. But because of the concerns about the effects of loneliness, he says, solitude ended up "with a bit of a bad reputation – throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak". Now, though, the discourse is course-correcting itself. The distinction between loneliness and solitude, according to Coplan, is an important one, and many writers echo this sentiment. "While loneliness is a serious and harmful problem for some people, it is a subjective state very different from solitude, that someone has [actively] chosen for positive reasons," says journalist Heather Hansen. In 2024, she co-authored the aforementioned Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone with Netta Weinstein and Thuy-vy T Nguyen. Hansen had watched the media telling us we're very lonely for a while; but as a counter to this narrative, she says, "people are reflecting on their own lives and recognising that they are choosing solitude for various reasons that benefit them". The message of rom-coms, love songs and Jane Austen novels – that we need a partner to be fulfilled – isn't backed by data – Peter McGraw "I have a theory that since the pandemic we've been able to clearly understand the difference between loneliness and chosen solitude," says Emma Gannon, who is also a big proponent of "slow living". The extremes of the pandemic – being cooped up with all your loved ones, or, contrastingly, going for months without human contact – had prepared us, Gannon says, "to have nuanced conversations about the differences between isolation and joyful alone time". Nestled cosily within these timely conversations is Gen Z-ers and millennials' re-evaluation of romantic relationships and enthusiastic embracing of single life, alongside a careful reassessment of interpersonal relationships in general. Gannon's new novel might be a fictional depiction of a young woman reinvesting in a relationship with herself, but it will ring true to many readers who grapple with what are increasingly seen as outdated societal expectations to "settle down". According to a 2023 US survey, two out of five Gen Z-ers and millennials think marriage is an outdated tradition, and in the UK only just over half of Gen Z men and women are predicted to marry, according to the Office of National Statistics. SHK/ Hamburger Kunsthalle/ bpk. Photo: Elke Walford Caspar David Friedrich's famous painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1817) captures the beauty of solitude (Credit: SHK/ Hamburger Kunsthalle/ bpk. Photo: Elke Walford) In April, a viral TikTok, with over one million likes and close to 37,000 comments, showcased one man's perspective on dating women who live alone, and like it this way. Many women deemed the analysis "spot on" and related eagerly. Nicola Slawson, who based Single: Living a Complete Life on Your Own Terms on her po[CENSORED]r Substack The Single Supplement, isn't surprised. "The number of people living alone in the UK has been steadily increasing over the last decade or so," Slawson points out, with this fuelling a cultural shift towards the acceptance of single people, and putting a focus on "freedom and independence, and especially a rejection of domesticity, as women are realising they don't have to put up with things they might have been expected to in previous generations". Having said that, our cultural fascination with being alone is deeply rooted. Capturing the beauty of solitude has been a focus for numerous artists over the centuries – from German romanticist Caspar David Friedrich, whose great works include Wanderer Above the Sea which can be seen in the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum's collection in Germany, to the revered 20th-Century US artist Edward Hopper, and his paintings of solo city dwellers. A New Yorker review of the 2022 Hopper retrospective at the city's Whitney museum noted, "Everything about the urban life he shows us is isolated, uncommunal – and yet his images of apparent loneliness seem somehow anything but grim, rather proudly self-reliant." Daniel Schreiber believes the correlation between people living alone, sans partner, and being lonely has traditionally been overestimated. "Society understands better now that romantic love is not the only model to live by, or something to wish for," he adds. "There are different ways of life, and it's not as necessary to be in a traditional romantic relationship." Revel in the soft blanket, the sound of music, the taste of your food. What can you see, smell, touch and sense when you are alone? – Emma Gannon In Solo: Building a Remarkable Life of Your Own, Peter McGraw, a self-titled "bachelor", and professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado, makes a similar point, with gusto. "There's a lot of mythology around single living, and a failure to understand the reasons marriage was invented – mostly as a business arrangement," he says. "Frankly, the message of rom-coms, love songs and Jane Austen novels" – that we need a partner to be fulfilled – "isn't backed by data," he says, "if we look at the longitudinal data": many studies cited in Solo show that even if personal happiness spikes around marriage, it doesn't last. Why being alone could be good for you Even within a relationship, traditional routines can be upended to allow for more alone time, as advocated in The Joy of Sleeping Alone. Its author, yoga and meditation teacher Cynthia Zak, noticed that many women prefer sleeping alone to sleeping in the same bed as their partners, and decided to write the book, originally in Spanish, in order to advocate for "more space to express what we need and feel, more opportunities to let go of fears and limiting beliefs, and more freedom to choose". How to be alone well If being, and doing things, alone is increasingly widespread – and stigma-free – then how to make the most of it? A couple of key factors everyone agrees on are finding a healthy balance between solo time and communing with others – and having the ability to choose solitude, rather than being forced to experience it. "The greatest indication of success in time alone is that a person has chosen that space believing that there is something important and meaningful there," says Hansen, adding that solitude is a "neutral blob of sculpting clay; it can be whatever we mould it into". Fittingly, according to McGraw it's perhaps best to not mould said blob into "lying in bed, vaping and ordering Uber Eats". Rather, he suggests channelling alone time into creative pursuits and pastimes that tend to blossom in solitude; a walk or a run, people-watching at a cafe, going to a museum and "taking it all in, as fast or slow as you can". Or how about "sitting in a bath listening to Vivaldi", he adds more specifically, or taking an online course? Paul Storrie Author Emma Gannon is celebrating solo living in her new novel Table For One (Credit: Paul Storrie) For those who are single, leaning into potentially blissful solitude – instead of waiting for it to be over – is advised, Slawson says. "I used to find myself putting off doing things until I 'settled down' or until I found a partner, but you need to live the life you have got and squeeze as much joy as possible from it instead of feeling like you're in a waiting room, waiting for your life to start," she says. And when societal pressure builds? "Don't default to any type of thinking or a script," McGraw suggests. "The nice thing is, that there's now an alternativ • The star tidying guru who transformed our homes More broadly, alone time is full of potential and possibilities. "I think solitude inspires a wonderful sense of creativity, it gets the juices flowing and encourages problem solving," Gannon says. She suggests treating solitude as an adventure – or a chance to reconnect with yourself, through journalling or revelling in your senses: "The soft blanket, the sound of music, the taste of your food. What can you see, smell, touch and sense when you are alone?". Further turning inward, says Zak, can deepen one's understanding of solitude; she suggests paying attention to moments of solitude, and turning these moments into recurring rituals that aid relaxation and reflection by practice. "Ask yourself, what is the thing that you most enjoy being alone with? Make a jewel of the moment you choose and give yourself the task to cherish this specific space more and more," she says. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250609-how-being-alone-can-make-you-happier

BAGHDAD, July 17 (Reuters) - A massive fire in a hypermarket in al-Kut city in southern Iraq has left at least 69 people dead and 11 others missing, the city's health authorities and two police sources told Reuters on Thursday. Reuters' footage of the aftermath of the overnight fire showed the blackened exterior of "Corniche Hypermarket" building, with rescue teams and security forces still at the site. Videos verified by Reuters showed firefighters spraying water on the blazing building overnight and people climbing from the roof with the help of rescue teams. "We have more bodies that have not been recovered still under fire debris," city official Ali al-Mayahi told Reuters. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but an initial police report suggested that the fire had first erupted on the floor where perfumes and cosmetics are sold. "Raging fires trapped many people inside the mall, and everyone was desperately trying to find a way out," said Ali Al-Zargani, whose house is next to the market building and who entered the premises after the fire had subsided. Item 1 of 3 A fire truck stands next to the wreckage of a five-storey shopping center, after a massive overnight fire killed dozens of people, in al-Kut, Wasit province, Iraq, July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad [1/3]A fire truck stands next to the wreckage of a five-storey shopping center, after a massive overnight fire killed dozens of people, in al-Kut, Wasit province, Iraq, July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab "I saw the charred bodies of children and women lying on the ground — it was a horrifying scene." While some of the bodies were prepared for burial, with mourners weeping and praying over the coffins, the remains of more than 15 severely burned victims required DNA testing for identification, a Reuters witness said. As rescuers combed the smoke-charred building for more bodies, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an immediate investigation to "uncover any shortcomings", his office said in a statement. A statement from his office called for national mourning. The provincial governor said initial results from an investigation would be announced within 48 hours, the INA state news agency reported. "We have filed lawsuits against the owner of the building and the mall," INA quoted the governor as saying. A lack of safety measures in Iraq has led to large death tolls in fires. In 2023, more than 100 people were killed after a fire swept through a crowded wedding hall in a northern town. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fire-iraq-mall-kills-69-prime-minister-orders-probe-2025-07-17/

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Pokemon GO sets Terrakion as a Legendary 5-Star Raid Boss. Those who win the Raid can encounter a High IV Terrakion. Some lucky Raid winners might also get a Shiny Terrakion instead of a Standard variant. Terrakion is a dual Fighting and Rock-type Pokemon with a maximum Combat Power of 4181 CP. This maximum CP cap boosts notably as the Legendary Pokemon becomes a 5-Star Raid Boss. Since the Raid Boss is a powerhouse, you should team up with 4 or more trainers rather than attempting the Raid solo. Once you study Terrakion's Pokemon GO weaknesses and resistances, you can then select the best Terrakion counters and win Terrakion Raids. Since Terrakion is a Legendary Pokemon with a high DPS, it is considered one of the toughest Raid Bosses. High IV Terrakion in Pokemon GO has even more value in PvP and PvE battles. Those who win a Terrakion Raid get a guaranteed Terrakion encounter. Pokemon GO: Best Terrakion Raid Counters Crowned Sword Zacian: Metal Claw & Behemoth Blade Dusk Mane Necrozma: Psycho Cut & Sunsteel Strike Crowned Shield Zamazenta: Metal Claw & Behemoth Bash Shadow Mewtwo: Confusion & Psychic Primal Kyogre: Waterfall & Surf Mega Gardevoir: Confusion & Psychic Mega Gallade: Confusion & Psychic Mega Latios: Zen Headbutt & Psychic Mega Alakazam: Confusion & Future Sight Primal Groudon: Mud Shot & Earthquake https://gamerant.com/pokemon-go-how-to-get-terrakion-shiny-terrakion/

Neverwinter Nights 2 is one of my favorite games⁠—if you want to know why you should play it, I've got a separate write-up here. Even though NwN2 released in 2006 after the dawn of the Xbox 360, it's aged more poorly than many of its contemporaries and even predecessors, making it harder and harder to recommend over the years until now. I'm happy to say that Aspyr did a great job on its remaster, and this is the version of NwN2 you should play today⁠—whether as an old fan coming back or a first-time player. It's just $10 more expensive than the $20 complete collection on GOG (the original is not available on Steam), and offers a smoother, more adaptable, and more user-friendly experience that crucially has full compatibility with old mods and fan campaigns. Most transformative for me has been bringing NwN2 on the go with my Steam Deck. NwN2EE has been Deck-verified since before it was even announced, but that little green check can have a lot of variance, and I was worried NwN2 would feel unavoidably stepped-on and compromised when played with a gamepad. Thankfully, it never quite demands the same level of micromanagement as the OG Baldur's Gates and finds a nice groove with gamepad controls. Basically, it plays like Knights of the Old Republic. The keyboard shortcuts squashed on a pad definitely make my brain heat up like it's trying to remember fighting game combos: Pause, a character menu, change target, hotbar select, party select, and swapping camera modes are each assigned to a button, but I've gotten used to it. A more minor gripe: It feels clunky that selecting a party member or hotbar action doesn't take you out of their sub-menus automatically. You have to press right trigger, select a party member, then press right trigger again to start controlling them. I'd like to see a menu option to streamline that added in a patch. But we've come a long way since the days of received wisdom being that PC complexity can't work on a gamepad. NwN2 Enhanced feels great with a controller. Little complaints aside, I can't imagine significant improvements to the system Aspyr implemented. Performance has been great on Deck for me, a fairly consistent 60fps, though I was amused to see two inexplicably framerate-killing zones from the original game still made the fan spin up and the fps chug (it's definitely better here though). My only complaint on this front is that NwN2EE is a bit of a battery hog: Sub-three hours on an original Steam Deck for a game whose min-spec GPU is the 13 year-old GTX 660. Far from a dealbreaker, but something I'd like to see further optimized. I was hard pressed to notice a visual upgrade when I was just playing NwN2EE on my Deck, but it sunk in when I swapped between the same save in the OG and Enhanced versions on my desktop: The textures are pleasingly crisp now, and the UI finally scales well to HD resolutions instead of getting unusably tiny. Comparing the same area of Neverwinter's Merchant Quarter side-by-side with the original, I also got more consistent performance in the Enhanced Edition. I didn't have time to invest in significant hardware testing and comparisons, but I noticed that the remaster was actually demanding less CPU usage overall, and spreading it throughout the various cores and threads more efficiently than the original. Aside from scaling better to higher resolutions, NwN2EE's UI is more or less unchanged—it's less friendly and intuitive than the OG Baldur's Gates or Neverwinter Nights 1, let alone modern RPGs like Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate 3. But the remaster does feel better on M&K than the original. It's hard to pin down, but camera control in the original NwN2 always felt bad to me, no matter how I adjusted sensitivity settings in-game. In the Enhanced Edition, the m&k camera controls are smooth and pleasant, if a little too zippy by default. I was hard pressed to notice a visual upgrade when I was just playing NwN2EE on my Deck, but it sunk in when I swapped between the same save in the OG and Enhanced versions on my desktop: The textures are pleasingly crisp now, and the UI finally scales well to HD resolutions instead of getting unusably tiny. Comparing the same area of Neverwinter's Merchant Quarter side-by-side with the original, I also got more consistent performance in the Enhanced Edition. I didn't have time to invest in significant hardware testing and comparisons, but I noticed that the remaster was actually demanding less CPU usage overall, and spreading it throughout the various cores and threads more efficiently than the original. Aside from scaling better to higher resolutions, NwN2EE's UI is more or less unchanged—it's less friendly and intuitive than the OG Baldur's Gates or Neverwinter Nights 1, let alone modern RPGs like Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate 3. But the remaster does feel better on M&K than the original. It's hard to pin down, but camera control in the original NwN2 always felt bad to me, no matter how I adjusted sensitivity settings in-game. In the Enhanced Edition, the m&k camera controls are smooth and pleasant, if a little too zippy by default. The mod compatibility really brought a smile to my face. I tested two: Remove Level Adjustment, an essential quality of life fix that does away with D&D 3.5's level handicap for certain races like Drow, and The Maimed God's Saga, a well-loved fan campaign. Both worked without a hitch on Steam Deck, though I have run into a minor crash issue with The Maimed God's Saga: If I load my save from the main menu, NwN2 crashes back to SteamOS. If I load another save first, then TMGS, we're good. The only other problem was doing a lot of file management with the Deck's trackpad instead of a mouse, plus digging deep due to how SteamOS buries some game files. For the level adjustment fix, what is simply dropped in "My Documents / Neverwinter Nights 2 / override" on Windows has to instead get routed to "home / .steam [a hidden folder] / steam / steamapps / compdata/ 2738630 [the game's numerical ID in Steam, found in its store page URL] / pfx / drive_c / users / steamuser / Documents / Neverwinter Nights 2 / override." Sweet merciful Christ. But that's a Steam Deck problem, not a Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition problem. This is a fantastic version of one of my favorite games, an Obsidian and D&D classic that really deserves its flowers. This isn't a flashy graphics overhaul, but a competent, measured, and effective clean-up job, one that leaves plenty of eccentricities in place. Your party members still have the dumbest friendly AI I've ever seen in an RPG, but I don't know if I'd want it any other way. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/neverwinter-nights-2-enhanced-edition-is-an-excellent-subtle-remaster-and-my-new-steam-deck-game-of-the-summer/

Apple is believed to announce its iPhone 17 family in the second week of September. The iPhone 17 Air, which is expected to replace the 'Plus' version, is likely to be a game-changer in the new lineup with a slim design. Several leaks and rumours have already suggested its design and specifications. Now, a new report indicates that the iPhone 17 Air could be the only new iPhone model to feature a Titanium frame. iPhone 17 Air Said to Feature Titanium Frame MacRumors, quoting an investor note by analyst Jeff Pu from equity research firm GF Securities, has reported that iPhone 17 Air, which is expected to be unveiled as the successor to last year's iPhone 16 Plus, will arrive with a Titanium frame. The iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max models will reportedly be equipped with an Aluminium frame.Apple used a Titanium frame for its iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max models. Whereas, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models came with an Aluminium frame. The report pointed out that Apple is said to use Titanium as it is claimed to offer superior durability that could help in maintaining structural integrity of the iPhone 17 Air's supposed slender design. However, the report also notes that aluminium is lighter compared to Titanium and may have been a better choice. The iPhone 17 series is expected to have different designs for each model. They rumoured Apple smartphones are expected to launch between September 8 and September 12. According to a recent report, the iPhone 17 Pro models could be powered by Apple's A19 Pro chip, paired with 12GB of RAM, while the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air may use the standard A19 chip alongside 8GB of RAM. Additionally, the iPhone 17 Pro and non-Pro models are tipped to feature a 6.3-inch display. Meanwhile, the iPhone 17 Air could sport a 6.5-inch screen, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max is expected to get a 6.9-inch display. https://www.gadgets360.com/mobiles/news/iphone-17-air-pro-max-aluminium-titanium-frame-material-jeff-pu-report-8886855

Windows 11's handheld mode could arrive sooner than we thought, based on clues dug up in a recent preview build of the operating system. A handheld mode would be designed for using Windows 11 on a portable gaming system – such as the inbound Asus ROG Xbox Ally – morphing the interface into something more convenient for a compact display (and gamepad controls rather than the mouse). A regular leaker on X, PhantomOfEarth, just spotted what appears to be the initial setup experience for Windows 11 on a handheld, as you can see in the below post. This was found in preview build 26100.4762 of Windows 11, which arrived in the Release Preview channel last week (the final stage before the finished version of the OS). Windows Latest spotted the above post, and also did some digging of its own in other preview builds (in the Dev channel, an earlier testing outlet), uncovering references to a gamepad-optimized interface. (As well as a 'cloud host environment' for a 'gamepad-based device', which triggers said interface to be used, catering for pad-based controls and buttons). Another denizen of X in that thread also observes that there are references in the code for Windows 11 to 'gaming handhelds', all of which indicate that there's a lot of work currently being plumbed into the guts of the desktop OS to facilitate a new handheld experience. There's been a lot of dissatisfaction around gaming handhelds that use Windows 11, because the design of the OS often doesn't suit a smaller screen, as mentioned. Elements which are fine and work well on a large desktop monitor can be plain fiddly on a handheld display, and overall, Windows 11 can be painful compared to the experience provided by SteamOS (which sports an interface designed for portable gaming). A dedicated handheld mode for Windows 11 that smooths over many of the problems that are inherent with the OS in this form factor has long been rumored, and it looks like it's coming closer and closer now. It isn't surprising that Microsoft is seemingly putting its foot on the gas pedal, mind, given that the Asus Xbox Ally is expected to arrive later this year (though note that no release date has officially been aired yet). I'm excited to see how this new interface plays out, to say the least – and Microsoft has already been working to make Windows 11 more functional on a handheld with changes to the Xbox app and the Game Bar. While the code unearthed above is in the Release Preview channel, which as noted is one step before release, remember that it's still hidden in the background, so don't expect an imminent arrival. We should start to see more pieces of the puzzle falling into place (in testing) soon enough, well before the Asus Xbox Ally arrives (hopefully with not too hefty a price tag, though rumors aren't favorable on that score). https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11s-handheld-mode-spotted-in-testing-and-im-seriously-excited-for-microsofts-big-bet-on-small-screen-gaming

Fears of new U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made 3D printers may have caused shipments of consumer-level 3D printers to surge in the first quarter of 2025, according to data gathered by market intelligence firm CONTEXT. The report shows that buyers are opting for less expensive, high-performance machines, such as those from Bambu Lab, over more costly professional and industrial machines. CONTEXT generously defines entry-level 3D printers as those under $2500, which would include po[CENSORED]r printers like the Bambu Lab X1C, plus the A1 and P1 series. The H2D without a laser would squeak in at this level, though the full laser combo we reviewed would be pushed into the Professional category. The company’s latest report on Q1 data shows more than one million “entry-level” machines were shipped worldwide from January to March of this year. This represents a 15% year-over-year increase, while industrial shipments were down 17% and midrange pro machines were down 13% the last 12 months. This shows a clear shift in buying habits, as another market intelligence company, Mordor Intelligence, suggests that Additive Manufacturing as a whole is growing. Mordor Intelligence reports that the global 3D Printing market reached $25.32 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to $66.42 billion by 2030. Desktop 3D printing – where consumer-level 3D printers reside – is a sizable part of the equation, reaching $6.7 billion in 2025. Among these so-called entry-level brands, Chinese companies accounted for 95% of the machines shipped globally. Creality maintained its position as the market leader in this category with a 39% share, even though its unit sales dipped by 3%. Bambu Lab saw the most growth, with shipments up 64% year-over-year. The report stated that Flashforge and Elegoo also posted strong gains. Elegoo refused to comment on their sales numbers, citing confidentiality. Prusa Research, well known as a supporter of the consumer 3D printing community, straddles the line, with two of their machines crossing into the pro/industrial side: the Prusa XL and the Prusa Pro HT90. The latter machine is a $10,000 delta specifically for engineering-grade materials. But the company is very confident that the Prusa CORE One, released towards the end of Q1, will shake up the entry-level category. “We knew from the start that the CORE One was going to shake things up in this category and claim the crown. It’s affordable, prints fantastic quality from PLA and PETG even with the closed door, and handles tough materials like PC and ASA better than a lot of more expensive machines. So honestly, it’s no surprise we’re seeing double-digit growth year-on-year.”3D printing isn’t just becoming more widely adopted. The Mordor Intelligence report found that using 3D printers for prototyping parts was only 42% of the reason companies use additive manufacturing. This suggests that companies are embracing 3D printing for manufacturing finished parts. The medical industry is using resin 3D printing more and more to produce dental implants and surgical guides, while power bed fusion is being used in the automotive and aerospace industries. Companies are using 3D printing to manufacture personalized goods, and we’re not just talking about a mug with your name on it. Custom eyewear frames are becoming po[CENSORED]r, as are made-to-spec sporting goods, such as golf clubs, football helmets, and shoes. https://www.tomshardware.com/3d-printing/tariff-fears-caused-a-surge-in-entry-level-3d-printer-sales-chinese-companies-accounted-for-95-percent-of-entry-level-machines-shipped-globally