- US imposes fresh sanctions targeting Iran oil trade, Hezbollah Reuters
- US issues first wave of Iran sanctions after ceasefire in 12-day war Al Jazeera
- US slaps sanctions on Iran’s oil smuggling network, Hezbollah finance firm The Times of Israel
- Sanctioning Senior Members of Longstanding Hizballah Financial Institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan (AQAH) U.S. Department of State (.gov)
- Oil Edges Higher After U.S. Takes Measures to Curb Trade of Iranian Oil WSJ
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US imposes fresh sanctions targeting Iran oil trade, Hezbollah – Reuters
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DVIDS – News – Forces Kill Taliban Commander, Other Enemy Fighters
A combined force killed a dozen militants and detained several suspects in Kandahar province after stopping a number of vehicles in pursuit of a Taliban commander of the province’s Maywand district. The force initially targeted a number of vehicles in transit across southern Maywand after intelligence indicated militant activity. Several militants were killed after they failed to respond to warnings, and others were detained. Subsequently, the combined force received hostile fire from militants in multiple vehicles maneuvering in their direction. The force returned fire, killing another group of militants. The force searched each of the vehicles and recovered a number of small-arms weapons, documents and 2,600 pounds of black-tar heroin. The force identified one of the dead as the sought-after Taliban commander of Maywand.
— A combined force detained several suspected militants after searching compounds in Wardak province known to be used by a Taliban commander and his unit responsible for several rocket and bombing attacks in the region. The force targeted the compounds near the village of Patankhel in the Sayed Abad district after intelligence indicated militant activity there. The force searched the compound without incident and detained several suspects. No shots were fired, and no one was injured in the search.
In other news from Afghanistan, international forces have responded to accusations that a U.S. servicemember burned the Quran last week in Wardak province’s Maydan Shar district.
In response to the accusations, ISAF troops conducted an investigation in conjunction with local Afghan army commanders and found the claim groundless.
A spokesman for Wardak Gov. Mohammad Alim Fadayee, and Mullah Qari of the Afghan army in Wardak, publicly stated that ISAF troops were not responsible for the desecration and found no wrongdoing by international forces.
In his public address, Mullah Qari provided the results of the investigation into the incident and offered an explanation.
“Dear brothers, recently, the incident of burning of the Quran that happened in Kowte Ashrow, it was the actions of the enemies of Afghanistan and Islam for their private purposes,” Qari said. “The enemies of Afghanistan are trying to make people go against the government in order to start riots.”
(Compiled from NATO International Security Assistance Force news releases.)
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Draper: Most players don't bully me, Cilic did – ATP Tour
- Draper: Most players don’t bully me, Cilic did ATP Tour
- ‘One of toughest losses’ – Draper exits Wimbledon early again BBC
- It’s not just Novak Djokovic. Marin Cilic and other 30-somethings make their mark at Wimbledon The Washington Post
- Wimbledon 2025: Draper in trouble against Cilic, Sinner v Vukic – live The Guardian
- Cilic takes Agassi’s tried and tested route to get back into winning form Reuters
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Wimbledon 2025: Jack Draper ‘not good enough’ against Marin Cilic at All England Club
British number one Jack Draper says he was not “good enough” in a shock Wimbledon second-round exit, insisting a below-par performance was not because he felt increased pressure at this year’s tournament.
Draper was seeded fourth at the All England Club, but lost 6-4 6-3 1-6 6-4 to 36-year-old Marin Cilic.
The 23-year-old was the highest seeded home player since Andy Murray defended the men’s title in 2017.
In 2013, Murray, who retired last year, was the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years and added his second title three years later.
“It makes me think that Andy’s achievement of what he did – winning here twice – [was] just unbelievable,” Draper said.
“It’s not the pressure. I wasn’t going out there thinking I was under so much pressure. You [journalists] mention it all the time.
“I just didn’t play good enough. I lost to a better player. That’s the main reason. I just was not able to find the level I wanted. I came up short.”
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Women’s Irish Open: Tamburlini and Fernandez share the lead after day one
Spain’s Blanca Fernandez and Switzerland’s Chiara Tamburlini carded opening 67s to share the Women’s Irish Open lead after the first round at Carton House.
English trio Lottie Woad, Mimi Rhodes and Hannah Screen are among a group one shot back, but home favourite Leona Maguire is five off the lead.
In tricky conditions that fluctuated between showers and sunshine, with a swirling wind added to the mix, it was Fernandez and Tamburlini who made the best of it to lead the way.
Both had seven birdies and a single bogey in their round, with Tamburlini picking up a shot on three of the last four holes.
Joining Order of Merit leader Rhodes, world number one amateur Woad and Screen on five under were Swedish pair Lisa Patterson and Madelene Sagstroem, plus Alexandra Swayne, who is representing the Unites States Virgin Islands, with the sextet just one shot off the pace in a packed leaderboard.
Indeed, just two strokes separate the top 19 players with another 11 just a further shot back, including the best of the home challengers Emma Fleming, who claimed the Victorian Amateur Championship in Australia last month.
Maguire endured a frustrating day on the greens, but the Cavan woman remains in contention having ended day one with a 72, tied with three other Irish players on one-under-par.
A number of Maguire’s Solheim Cup team-mates started strongly with Sagstrom posting the best round of the five, while England’s Charley Hull (-3) and Georgia Hall (-2) are well in contention heading into day two.
Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, though, has work to do having finished the day on two over.
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No Bonmati, no bother – Vicky López steps up in Spain’s statement of intent win over Portugal
Vicky López shines for Spain
Vicky López’s professional career is one brought on by pure chance, sparked by a conversation with two girls at the beach.
The encounter would lead her to the youth team of Madrid CFF, despite initial reservations over difficulties getting to and from training.
Both the club and Vicky’s parents worked together to make it happen. Things became difficult in 2018 with the passing of her mother following a four-year long battle with a brain tumour.
“My mother has always been my reference,” the 18-year-old said.
“She has been the strongest person in the world – from her, I have inherited her courage, strength, and being a great person.”
That courage has seen her through a transformational move to FC Barcelona and being called up to the senior national team.
On Thursday evening, all of those years of hard work and sacrifices paid off as the teenage sensation slotted home in her first major tournament for Spain.
Wheeling away in celebration, the talented midfielder pointed to the sky – an homage to her late mother.
What is perhaps most impressive about López’s display is that she did it while filling in for the benched Aitana Bonmati, a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, which is no easy feat.
Yet she made it look effortless – a skilful dribbler, a slick passer of the ball, and a refined player for her age.
With her first-half strike, she became the youngest player to appear and score at a European Championships.
Bonmati replaced the youngster with 10 to go and will no doubt feature heavily as the competition goes on, but López has given Montserrat Tomé plenty to think about with this performance.
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Very massive stars vomit vast amounts of matter before collapsing into black holes
Very massive stars that collapse to create black holes may vomit out much more material during their short lives than we previously thought.
To fit with astronomical observations of these stars, which have masses over 100 times that of the sun, a team of scientists has estimated that very massive stars must have stellar winds far more powerful than has been estimated in the past. These winds should be powerful enough to blow the outer layers of these monstrous stars into space.
The team’s modeling revealed how stellar binaries can lead to mergers between stars that forge single, very massive stars. They also explored how stronger stellar winds impact black hole populations, pointing away from the formation of elusive intermediate-mass black holes.
“Very massive stars are like the ‘rock stars’ of the universe — they are powerful, and they live fast and die young,” team member Kendall Shepherd, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Italy (known by its Italian acronym, SISSA), told Space.com. “For these very massive stars, their stellar wind is more like a hurricane than a light breeze.”
While our average-sized sun is expected to live for around 10 billion years, very massive stars burn through their nuclear fuel faster, living for just a few million years, or even a few hundred thousand years.
Studying such behemoths is important because they have a profound impact on their environments despite their short lives, Shepherd said.
“The strong winds of very massive stars and their eventual supernova explosions eject newly formed elements into the environment,” she said. “Many of these elements form the basis of new stars, while others, like carbon and oxygen, are the building blocks of life.
“They are also the progenitors of black holes, including the black hole binaries that merge and produce gravitational waves that we detect on Earth.”
The Rock Star mass-loss diet
In the new research, Shepherd and her colleagues analyzed theoretical and observational studies of very massive stars.
“Such massive stars are so incredibly rare, and so few observational constraints existed,” Shepherd said. “With the help of space and ground-based telescopes, researchers were recently finally able to directly observe several stars in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud with masses above 100 times our sun’s mass for the first time.”
Those previous studies found that the most massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula are a rare hot and bright type of mostly stripped Wolf-Rayet stars (WNh stars) at the end of their hydrogen-burning phase, meaning they show leftover hydrogen on their surface.
“These stars were found to be very hot, around 72,540 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (40,000 to 50,000 degrees Celsius). That’s a little too hot! Standard models predict that, as the stars age, they should expand and cool down, in contrast to what the new observations showed,” Shepherd said. “Researchers put the two pieces together and used the observed properties to calibrate a mass-loss ‘recipe’ to combine the theory and observation.”
The Tarantula Nebula is located in the southern constellation Dorado (Dolphin Fish), 160,000 light-years from Earth. It’s home to massive hot stars. (Image credit: Fred Herrmann | Owl Mountain Observatory ) The team worked this recipe into their stellar evolution code, known as PARSEC (PAdova and tRieste Stellar Evolution Code), to create a new model accounting for the massive stars of the Tarantula Nebula.
“Our new models featuring stronger stellar winds are now able to match the observations and theory. The strong winds strip away the star’s outer layers, preventing it from cooling down, while maintaining the surface composition matching a WNh star,” Shepherd explained. “The star stays more compact and hot for longer, exactly reproducing what observations show.”
This artist’s impression shows the relative sizes of young stars, from the smallest red dwarfs, weighing in at about 0.1 solar masses, through low-mass yellow dwarfs, such as the sun, to massive blue dwarf stars weighing eight times more than the sun, as well as the 300-solar-mass star named R136a1. (Image credit: European Southern Observatory) The team’s research suggests there are two different routes that could have led to the birth of stars like the most massive star ever seen, R136a1. This star, also found in the Tarantula Nebula, has up to 230 times the mass of the sun and emits millions of times more energy than our star. It’s also just 1.5 million years old, compared to the 4.6 billion–year-old sun.
The team’s model suggests that R136a1 could have been born as a single, ginormous star, or it could have formed as a result of a dramatic stellar merger.
“I was surprised that our results give two distinct possible explanations for the origin of R136a1, the most massive star known. I was quite fascinated that a binary stellar merger — where two stars merge and become a single, more massive star — could provide a plausible origin,” Shepherd said. “Even more interesting is the difference in the initial mass that is needed to reproduce R136a1 from the single-star and binary stellar merger scenarios.”
The researcher added that, for a single-star origin to match the features of R136a1, the star would need an initial mass over 100 solar masses — larger than is needed for a binary stellar merger origin, regardless of the wind recipe used.
“This could suggest a revision to what we thought was the upper limit for how massive a star can be in the local universe,” Shepherd said.
What direction does the wind blow for black holes?
Strong stellar winds and the rapid mass loss they cause also have strong implications for the masses of black holes that are created when massive stars collapse under their own gravity at the end of their lives.
“Because the stronger winds strip away so much of the star’s mass, at the end of their lives they form smaller black holes,” Shepherd said. “This study can shed a lot of light on predicting black hole masses. Stellar models that use the standard and weaker mass-loss recipes can produce intermediate-mass black holes.”
These black holes, which are around 100 to 10,000 times more massive than the sun, have proved difficult for astronomers to find.
“By having the stars lose more mass via stronger winds, the simulations produce fewer of these uncertain objects, making our models more in line with what is found in nature!” Shepherd said.
An artists illustration of two black holes circling around each other and colliding, 1.4 billion light years from Earth. The merger created ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. LIGO detected those waves in December 2015. (Image credit: LIGO) The team also proposes that, contrary to current thinking, stronger stellar winds are needed if systems are to develop into black hole binaries with masses both greater than around 30 times that of the sun.
“Even more exciting is that, when we looked at the binary black holes that merge in our simulations, our new models with stronger winds were able to produce systems where the two black holes were both massive,” Shepherd said. “This is exciting because this is a population that has been observed with gravitational wave detectors, but which previous models with standard winds struggled to produce.”
The two black holes in these binaries emit tiny ripples in space called gravitational waves as they spiral together and eventually merge. But strong stellar winds may be key to allowing this situation to develop.
“With the weaker, standard winds, the two stars expand and are more likely to merge before becoming black holes,” Shepherd explained. “In contrast, the stronger winds can push the two stars apart, allowing them to survive as a pair of black holes that can later spiral in and merge.”
The new research was focused on one specific environment, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which has its own unique chemical composition. Thus, Shepherd said, the next step for the team will be to try to explain a handful of peculiar observed stars.
“These results are not yet universal, and so the natural next step would be to extend this study to a range of different initial compositions, to model different environments across the universe,” Shepherd concluded. “It would be very exciting to see how much the predicted black hole populations change with these differing initial compositions.”
The team’s research is available as a preprint on the research repository arXiv.
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Shelton unable to convert 3 MPs before play suspended at Wimbledon – ATP Tour
- Shelton unable to convert 3 MPs before play suspended at Wimbledon ATP Tour
- Wimbledon star held back by supervisor as match suspended at crucial moment Daily Express
- Furious Ben Shelton is held back as he yells at rules official while being ordered off Wimbledon court talkSPORT
- Ben Shelton’s Wimbledon match suspended due to darkness as he serves for win The New York Times
- Wimbledon clash suspended with fuming star about to serve for the MATCH as he is held back from umpire The US Sun
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Can adults make new brain cells? New study may finally settle one of neuroscience’s greatest debates
Researchers say they have found clear evidence that the human brain can keep making new neurons well into adulthood, potentially settling decades of controversy.
This new neuron growth, or “neurogenesis,” takes place in the hippocampus, a critical part of the brain involved in learning, memory and emotions.
“In short, our work puts to rest the long-standing debate about whether adult human brains can grow new neurons,” co-lead study author Marta Paterlini, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Live Science in an email.
Other experts agree that the work makes a strong case for adult neurogenesis.
While a single study does not constitute absolute proof, “this is strong evidence in support of the idea” that stem cells and precursors to new neurons exist and are proliferating in the adult human brain, said Dr. Rajiv Ratan, CEO of the Burke Neurological Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
“This is a perfect example of great science teeing up the ball for the clinical neuroscience community,” he told Live Science.
Related: Babies’ brain activity changes dramatically before and after birth, groundbreaking study finds
Capitalizing on new technologies
The researchers combined advanced techniques, including single-nucleus RNA sequencing and machine learning, to sort and examine brain tissue samples from international biobanks, they reported in a paper published July 3 in the journal Science. RNA, a cousin of DNA, reflects genes that are “switched on” inside cells, while machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence often used to crunch huge datasets.
Since the 1960s, researchers have known that mice, rats and some nonhuman primates make new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, part of the hippocampus, throughout life. But getting quality brain tissue samples from adult humans is extremely challenging.
“Human tissue comes from autopsies or surgeries, so how it’s handled — how long before it’s fixed in preservative, which chemicals are used, how thin the slices are — can hide those newborn cells,” Paterlini said. Employing new technologies enabled the team to overcome this challenge.
They analyzed more than 400,000 individual nuclei of hippocampus cells from 24 people, and in addition, looked at 10 other brains using other techniques. The brains came from people ages 0 to 78, including six children and four teens.
Using two cutting-edge imaging methods, the team mapped where new cells sat in the tissue. They saw groups of dividing precursor cells sitting right next to the fully formed neurons, in the same spots where animal studies have shown that adult stem cells reside.
“We didn’t just see these dividing precursor cells in babies and young kids — we also found them in teenagers and adults,” Paterlini said. “These include stem cells that can renew themselves and give rise to other brain cells.”
The newer technologies enabled the researchers to detect the new brain cells at various stages of development and conduct research that wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, Ratan added.
The team also used fluorescent tags to mark the proliferating cells. This enabled them to build a machine learning algorithm that identified the cells that they knew would turn into neurogenic stem cells, based on past rodent studies. This was a “clever approach” for tackling the challenges of studying brain-cell formation in adolescents and adults, Ratan said.
As expected, the brains of children produced more new brain cells than the brains of adolescents or adults did. Meanwhile, nine out of 14 adult brains analyzed with one technique showed signs of neurogenesis, while 10 out of 10 adult brains analyzed with a second technique bore new cells. Regarding the few brains with no new cells, Paterlini said it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the disparity between adult brains with evidence of new cells and those without.
Next, the researchers could explore whether the adults who produced new brain cells did so in response to a neurological disease, such as Alzheimer’s, or whether adult neurogenesis is a sign of good brain health, said Dr. W. Taylor Kimberly, chief of neurocritical care at Massachusetts General Brigham, who was not involved in the study.
“They were able to find these needles in a haystack,” Kimberly told Live Science. “Once you detect them and learn about them and understand their regulation,” scientists can research how to track the precursor cells through time and see how their presence relates to disease, he said.
He envisioned comparing patients who have dementia to “super agers” who are cognitively resilient in old age. If the link between neurogenesis and disease can be uncovered, perhaps that could open the door to treatments.
“Although the precise therapeutic strategies in humans are still under active research,” Paterlini said, “the very fact that our adult brains can sprout new neurons transforms how we think about lifelong learning, recovery from injury and the untapped potential of neural plasticity.”
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Scores killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies strikes
CNN
—
More than 80 Palestinians were killed across Gaza on Thursday, according to health officials, as Israel intensified its strikes across the strip.
The deaths, which authorities said included dozens of people seeking aid, come as negotiations to reach a ceasefire in the enclave ramp up. A source told CNN that Hamas officials were set to meet Thursday to prepare a response to the latest proposal, which has been accepted by Israel.
At a school-turned-displacement facility in Gaza City, 15 people were killed and 25 injured in Israeli strikes that left many with severe burns, the director of Al-Shifa hospital Dr. Mohammad Abu Silmiya said. The hospital is treating those wounded in the attack.
“The scene was extremely harrowing due to the charred bodies of the martyrs and children,” said Fares Afana, who heads the Emergency and Medical Services in northern Gaza, and had teams evacuating the injured from the school.
The hospital director said another 12 people were killed in other strikes in Gaza City.
In response to a CNN question on the school strike, the Israeli military said it struck a “key Hamas terrorist who was operating in a Hamas command and control center” in Gaza City. The Israeli military said that prior to the attack, “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”
Earlier this morning, the Israeli army said that over the past day it struck “approximately 150 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including terrorists, underground routes, military structures, weapons, sniper posts, and additional terror infrastructure sites.” CNN has requested comment from the Israeli military on Thursday’s strikes.
Images taken at the scene of the attack in Gaza City showed flames inside a building and several bodies that had been severely burned.
“Every so often, the Israelis would attack the school and bomb it, forcing us to flee, then we would return when the Israeli pressure eased. Today, as you can see, the pressure was intense,” said a woman, who did not give her name.
In southern Gaza, 35 bodies arrived at the Nasser Hospital on Thursday morning, according to the spokesman of Nasser hospital, Ahmad Al-Fara. The death toll includes fifteen people who were allegedly killed while waiting for aid in Khan Younis, and 20 others who died in strikes on encampments in the city, the hospital said.
The aid seekers were waiting near the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution sites in the Al-Tahliya area of southwest Khan Younis when they were hit, according to the hospital.
“They said the American (GHF) is safe, is that what safety looks like?” one man, Awad Barbach, said at the funeral of one of those killed.
In another incident, in central Gaza near the Netzarim Corridor, crowds gathered to receive aid from trucks when chaos ensued, a witness said. Twenty-five people were killed in the incident, according to Abu Silmiya, the Al-Shifa hospital director.
“It was a trap… people were stabbing each other for the food… (then there was an) hour and a half of (Israeli) gunfire… we are not Hamas or Fatah. I’m just a civilian who wants to eat, and instead I find death,” one eyewitness, Ahmed Khella, told CNN.
“Where are (Hamas)?… they are all dogs,” he added.
Later on Thursday evening, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said seven people had been killed and 17 others injured while waiting for aid in the Tahlia area east of Khan Younis. Ambulance crews transported the injured and bodies of the deceased to Al Amal hospital, PRCS said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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