77 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    We have a drone scandal at the Paris Olympics.

    Really.

    On July 22, a drone was flown over the New Zealand women’s football team training session in St Etienne.

    Team support members immediately reported the incident to police, leading to the drone operator, who has been identified as a support staff member of the wider Canadian Women’s football team, to be detained.

    Canada -- the defending champ -- plays New Zealand Friday. TSN notes Honduras accused Canada’s men’s team of drone spying in 2021, while France’s prime minister said security is intercepting six drones per day.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Getting a phone upgrade the hard way.

    Samsung gave 17,000 of its Galaxy Z Flip 6 phones to athletes and others around the Olympic and Paralympic games, and here’s one more unboxing.

    The phone itself isn’t more impressive than anyone else’s, but British rower Imogen Grant chose a tough upgrade path — the phone she’s replacing was another freebie from Samsung that she picked up at the Tokyo Olympics.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Why is there slowing growth in EV sales?

    On the Decoder podcast, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe points the finger at automakers for copying instead of seeking out customers who want a vehicle with a slightly different profile than Tesla’s alphabet series of Models.

    Oh, and he had some news about the R3X and why you probably won’t see CarPlay in a Rivian anytime soon.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The Asus ROG Ally X is now available for $799.

    Can a Windows handheld beat Valve’s Steam Deck OLED? This sequel to last year’s ROG Ally answers with more storage, faster RAM, double the battery, and USB4. We’ll need more time for benchmarking and battery testing before we can publish our review, but if you can’t wait, it is available now from Asus and Best Buy.

    Note: If you buy something from these links, we might get affiliate revenue.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Delta is still dealing with the massive CrowdStrike outage.

    Another IRL Blue Screen of Death, as captured by one of our own at JFK, highlights the slow recovery from Friday’s crash affecting millions of Microsoft Windows machines.

    FlightAware data showed more than 600 Delta flights canceled on Monday as of 7AM ET, reports Reuters. That’s reportedly about 16 percent of its total and among more than 5,000 flights Delta canceled since Friday.

    Screen at a Delta airport terminal showing a blue screen Windows error message over the weekend.
    Travel BSoD
    Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    ‘Pixel Satellite SOS’ might include two years of free service.

    Just when you thought we’d learned (and seen) everything there is to know about the Pixel 9 lineup, Android Authority reveals details about iPhone-like satellite features hinted at within Android 15 beta 4.

    There’s notification text saying, “Your Pixel has been updated to support satellite communication,” and other text about two years of free satellite service, although that may be just placeholder text.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Microsoft insists Game Pass isn’t ‘degraded,’ as the FTC claims.

    The FTC called Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass price hike “exactly the sort of consumer harm” it had predicted ahead of the company’s Activision-Blizzard buy.

    Microsoft’s response (PDF) claims that with included multiplayer and the upcoming day-and-date release of Call of Duty, the offering isn’t degraded at all.

    It is wrong to call this a “degraded” version of the discontinued Game Pass for Console offering. That discontinued product did not offer multiplayer functionality, which had to be purchased separately for an additional $9.99/month. While Game Pass Ultimate’s price will increase, the service will offer more value through many new games available “day-and-date.” Among them is the upcoming release of  Call of Duty, which has never before been available on a subscription day-and-date.
    Screenshot: Re: Federal Trade Commission v. Microsoft Corp. No. 23-15992 (PDF)
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The CrowdStrike CEO’s latest apology.

    In a tweet and blog post, George Kurtz says:

    As this incident is resolved, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and the steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.

    We are working on a technical update and root cause analysis that we will share with everyone as well.

    Other updates from CrowdStrike about Friday’s global IT misadventure warn about threat actors impersonating it in phishing attempts and other attacks or advise automated methods (PDF) to track down systems that have been affected.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    State and city governments are recovering from the CrowdStrike outage.

    The State of Connecticut DMV reported a return to normal services this afternoon, while CyberScoop points out some of the other entities that have reported issues to varying degrees in NYC, Ohio, Pennsylvania — you name it.