US

Governor JB Pritzker signed SB 315, the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, on 6 July 2026, making Illinois the first US state to require independent third-party safety audits for frontier AI systems.

FIFA's Disciplinary Committee suspended Folarin Balogun's automatic one-match ban on July 5, 2026, replacing it with a one-year probationary period under Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, clearing the US striker for the Round of 16 against Belgium on July 7.

The Artemis II crew passed 252,756 miles from Earth on April 6, surpassing a distance record that had stood since the Apollo 13 emergency in 1970.

Meta is considering layoffs that could affect 20% or more of its workforce, according to Reuters. The cuts would help offset aggressive AI infrastructure spending that reached $72 billion in 2025. Meta employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31.

The 19-year-old Mavericks rookie shot 19-of-30 in a 138-127 loss to Orlando, passing Brandon Jennings as the youngest player to hit 50 in a game.

Redmond startup Starcloud reached unicorn status 17 months after Y Combinator demo day with $170M Series A led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures. The company launched the first Nvidia H100 GPU to orbit in November 2025 and plans a 200-kilowatt spacecraft for SpaceX's Starship by 2028.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen completed the first major burn of their 10-day lunar flyby mission Thursday, placing their Orion spacecraft into high Earth orbit.

Meta cut 168 jobs in Washington state on March 31, 2026, targeting its Reality Labs virtual reality division. The cuts follow a broader restructuring that reorganizes 1,000 Reality Labs employees into AI-native 'pods' with new titles: AI Builder, AI Pod Lead, and AI Org Lead.