5 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
Skip to main content

Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Musician Oliver Tree has died at 32 in a helicopter collision.

    While on his “The World’s First World Tour” with plans to play on all seven continents, the vocalist, producer, filmmaker, and professional scooter rider was one of six people killed after two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. O Globo reports that after the crash on Sunday, one of the helicopters fell into an electric car dealership’s parking lot, sparking a fire that burned dozens of cars.

    Photos by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    SpaceX reportedly rented out Colossus 1 AI data center after it ran into latency issues.

    While SpaceX plans satellite-based AI servers, Bloomberg reports it ran into trouble trying to develop and run Grok AI in Memphis, citing unnamed sources. They claim that deals renting capacity to Anthropic ($15 billion annually) and Google ($920 million per month) happened following hardware variation and lag issues:

    Elon Musk’s company had planned to train its most cutting-edge AI models on a massive amount of computing power by using a cluster of three data center campuses. However, the firm encountered latency issues when connecting Colossus 1 with two other sites located more than 10 miles away, the people said, compounded by aging network infrastructure.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list adds a trillionaire.

    With the debut of SPCX, Elon Musk’s 4.8 billion shares are enough to push his wealth beyond $1.1 trillion, as noted on Forbes’ “definitive, minute-by-minute guide to every billionaire around the globe.”

    Screenshot of Forbes website showing Elon Musk net worth $1.1 trillion.
    Screenshot: Forbes.com
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    SPCX opens at $150 per share.

    As reported by CNBC, the New York Times, and others, trading commenced at a price 11 percent above the $135 IPO price, but lower than the $175 shown in some earlier indications. It’s already spiked as high as $167, before falling back to $155. As long as the share price remains above $138, that is enough to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

    It also gives SpaceX a market cap of over $2 trillion, making it currently the 6th most valuable public company in the US.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The all-too-predictable Flock stalking problem.

    A report from 404 Media shows how more than a dozen cases around the US have shown police using Flock to illegally stalk victims. Flock acknowledged it’s aware of 15 incidents, claiming“each surfaced because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.”

    But that doesn’t reflect how some victims only found out by using the HaveIBeenFlocked.com website that Flock has tried to have taken down, or the many years of similar reports with other surveillance tech, a problem the NSA tagged “LOVEINT.”

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    NASA announced the astronauts for the Artemis III mission in 2027.

    After the successful Artemis II test in April, NASA’s next crew will head to low-Earth orbit to “demonstrate critical systems needed for future lunar landings,” albeit without any Prada pajamas.

    The four astronauts selected are Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, Randy Bresnik, and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano from the ESA.

    Update: Added the names of the selected astronauts.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    “The cell Donut Lab is testing, is definitely not a solid-state, screen printed sodium-ion battery.”

    While the Verge Motorcycles spinoff Donut Lab has spent the last few months claiming to have solved solid-state batteries, science YouTuber Ziroth says he’s determined that the battery the company is testing is actually a lithium-ion battery cell.

    Among the evidence, as run down by Electrek, is the expansion pattern shown during VTT’s third-party testing, Donut Lab’s “production vehicle” claims that didn’t add up, and a questionable history for CT Coatings, the battery tech’s apparent supplier.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Apple blames the DMA again for “delayed” Siri AI in the EU.

    While Apple is launching Siri AI in English later this year, it wants EU users to have someone to blame for why it won’t be available there immediately on all of its platforms (only macOS, watchOS, and visionOS at first), similar to other EU-delayed Apple Intelligence updates:

    Siri AI is private by design and deeply integrated across Apple’s platforms using on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud. However, under EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA, Apple would have to give any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data — and the ability to directly control other installed applications — as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU, without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Sam Bankman-Fried wants a pardon from Trump.

    The convicted FTX fraudster serving a 25-year prison sentence now has a formal filing for the presidential pardon he’s been openly seeking, plus a new jailhouse phone interview with Fox Business. He presumably hopes that was seen inside the White House, despite Donald Trump’s comments in January that he had no plan to pardon SBF.

    Screenshot of the clemency case finder showing case number P338490 seeking a Pardon after Completion of Sentence for Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried
    Screenshot: Office of the Pardon Attorney