Who doesn't dream of owning their own little slice of the countryside - especially when it seems attractively priced? There's just one thing the estate agent can't warn you about... the travellers about to move in next door
The advert on the property website caught Lorna Derrett's eye: 'Perfect countryside plot'. It was exactly what she was looking for. Or so she thought.
The Morning Poll: Should the assisted dying debate be revisited?
MPs are preparing to bring the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill back to Parliament after its previous attempt to become law ran out of time in the House of Lords.
Who Wins and Who Loses After US Bans Foreign Robots?
The FCC's ban on Chinese-made robots extends well beyond humanoids to quadrupeds, research platforms, and many robot vacuums from allied countries. Supporters call it a major boost for domestic robotics, but critics warn that cutting researchers and startups off from affordable foreign hardware could slow U.S. innovation instead. Ars Technica's Jeremy Hsu examines who stands to gain and who stands to lose from the prohibition: Such an import ban would apply to some of the most affordable robots primarily produced by Chinese companies, including Unitree's humanoid robots that are used by robotics labs and researchers for tasks such as experimental robot surgeries. US consumers would also likely lose access to the newest robot vacuum cleaners that are mainly manufactured by Chinese companies such as Roborock. But the ban also broadly applies to foreign-made robots produced by countries nominally allied to the United States, including Japan, South Korea, and Germany. [...]
The ban on foreign-made robots could theoretically encourage more US and foreign companies to set up manufacturing facilities in the United States. There are already multiple companies racing to scale up production of humanoid robots in US factories, including Agility Robotics, 1X Technologies, and Figure AI. Tesla has been attempting to shift production away from older electric vehicle models and toward its Optimus humanoid robot. Boston Dynamics has already been making its Atlas humanoid robot, along with its four-legged Spot robot and wheeled Stretch robot, at its main facility in Waltham, Massachusetts. The US robotics company is also planning to massively scale up manufacturing of the Atlas robot under South Korea's Hyundai Motor Company, which gained full ownership of Boston Dynamics in July 2026.
"This is one of the strongest technology-security actions in modern US history," wrote Evan Beard, CEO of Standard Bots, in a LinkedIn post. "The message is unambiguous: robotics is a technology America must lead and own -- and foreign-subsidized robots will not be allowed to unfairly dominate US robotics as they did solar." Similar praise came from Rush Doshi, director of the Initiative on China Strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations, who, in a social media post, described the FCC decision as "one of the most significant actions taken so far in support of the US robotics ecosystem."
However, several robotics researchers and analysts interviewed by The Robot Report expressed skepticism about any potential boost to US competitiveness in robotics. Some even warned that the ban could prove counterproductive for US robotics efforts to develop humanoid robots. "In the near term, the measure could slow US physical AI innovation by cutting startups and researchers off from future low-cost Chinese platforms before comparable Western alternatives exist," said Georg Stieler, a global robotics advisor and managing director for Asia at Stieler Technology & Market Advisory, in an interview with The Robot Report.
US domestic production of robots lags behind China in terms of mass manufacturing at lower cost, said Rueben Scriven, a senior analyst at Interact Analysis. "This announcement is more likely to inhibit the US humanoid robotics industry, as the presence of low-cost Chinese humanoid robots has been helping educate the US market through promotional and entertainment use cases -- an effect this policy risks undermining," Scriven told The Robot Report. The report notes that previous FCC bans have done little to help create competitive U.S. alternatives, with restrictions on Chinese drones instead prompting companies to sell barely disguised versions of DJI technology.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The identity trust delusion
Join Rubrik's Mark Grant as he shares lessons from real recoveries, common mistakes, product evolution, and building long-term identity resilience.
From Pilots to AI Factories: How Enterprises Are Really Scaling Agentic AI and Agent Gateways
AI is shifting from simple chatbots to autonomous “coworkers,” and most enterprises are now constrained less by models than by the complexity
How the elderly face longer waits in A&E than younger people
A think-tank found that 40 per cent of patients aged 81 and over wait more than 12 hours to be seen.
Oh DEER! Doe is spotted with her fawn in a field of wheat
The wild animal, which was travelling with her fawn, was spotted in the village of Barsbuttel close to Hamburg in northern Germany.
Cross-party talks on reforms are a stunt by Labour, say Tories
The Prime Minister is determined to push for a political consensus on social care in a bid to find a lasting solution.
Phone of British woman, 38, who was found in a suitcase in an abandoned building in Athens 'was being used after she died to make it seem as if she was alive'
The body of Elisabeth Jane Ross, from Scotland, was found by a homeless man in the district of Kypseli in the Greek capital on Saturday, July 18.
Pedestrian, 64, dies 'after being hit by a road sweeper' in Salford
Emergency services were called to Little Hulton in Salford on Tuesday morning following reports a 64-year-old had been seriously injured.
Man returns his late grandfather's overdue library books... 116 YEARS after they were borrowed
Avid reader Walter Griffith Owen checked out Paradise and King Lear over a century ago, in 1910, and failed to return them one week later.
Amy Winehouse's father is ordered to pay nearly £1million to late star's friends after failed High Court claim over auctioning of her possessions
Mitch Winehouse , 75, must also cover his own legal costs after the failed High Court claim, which amounted to at least £950,000.
Ukrainian tourists sunbathe as Putin's bombs rain down near Black Sea beach resort
Photos taken from the port city of Odesa showed scores of sunbathers looking on in horror as smoke rises from the distance.
Microsoft's cloud brings rain of revenue but modest M365 AI revenue harvest
Capex spending? What? Me worry?
Tesco and Sainsbury's sound alarm over food supplies after heatwaves and wildfires in Europe
In a new letter to Andy Burnham, major supermarkets have urged ministers to tackle issues around food security.
The Essex area where homes with a sea view cost £222k more than in 2019
Many view homes with a sea view as desirable
Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows
Valve is funding Collabora's experimental effort to port the open-source RADV Vulkan driver from Linux to Windows. The team has already demonstrated Counter-Strike 2 running with RADV, but a stable interface or compatibility shim will be needed to handle undocumented driver changes. Phoronix reports: Louis-Francis Ratte-Boulianne put out a blog post highlighting their initial work on porting RADV to Windows. Besides working on Windows WDDM2 integration for Windows, a big challenge with porting RADV to Windows is on relying on the AMD Radeon Software Windows kernel driver.
It's out-of-scope of this current work for trying to port the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver to Windows, so they are working on bringing RADV to Windows while relying on AMD's official Windows kernel driver. That in turn has led to reverse engineering and other steps for figuring out the proprietary kernel driver's data structures and other elements so RADV can be adapted to use it.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Adam Peaty kisses pregnant wife Holly Ramsay's baby bump as he celebrates winning a silver medal for the 4x100m relay at the Commonwealth Games
Adam Peaty kissed his pregnant wife Holly Ramsay's baby bump as he celebrated winning a silver medal for the 4x100m medley relay at the Commonwealth Games on Wednesday.
Why getting fired from Beverly Hills 90210 was the best thing for Hollywood star Hilary Swank's career
Getting fired from a big Hollywood role would for many be a career low difficult to come back from.
How to get the best out of a builder? Not by serving endless pots of tea! CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Extraordinary Extensions
Homeowners come in two basic types - the ones who make endless cups of tea for workmen, and the ones who act as overseers, scrutinising every detail.