Those who have followed Cobolli’s rise over the past 12 months will not be surprised to see him making a maiden appearance in the last eight of a Grand Slam.
He won his first ATP Tour title this year in Romania and followed that up with victory in Hamburg – both on his favoured surface of clay.
Cobolli has previously stated that as a junior he “hated playing on grass”.
Ironic for someone who also played football, spending five years in the academy of his beloved football club Roma, where he played as a right-back.
He has a tattoo on his chest with the words ‘sei tu l’unica mia sposa, sei tu l’unico mio amor’ which translates as ‘you are my only wife, you are my only love’ – a famous quote from club legend Daniele de Rossi.
When he won the French Open boys’ singles title in 2020, he held a Roma scarf above his head in celebration and says he still prefers to watch football than tennis, attending matches when he can.
He chose to pursue tennis aged 14, preferring the solo nature of the game, and is starting to reap the rewards.
Against the wily Cilic, who beat Briton Jack Draper in the second round and was enjoying his best run at Wimbledon since reaching the final in 2017, Cobolli showed efficiency and poise, needing just two breaks of serve to take a two-set lead.
World number 83 Cilic finally got into the contest when an untimely double fault from Cobolli handed the Croat the third set, the first blemish on Cobolli’s perfect record at this tournament.
With strong strokes from the baseline forming a solid foundation and an impressive shot variety at his disposal, Cobolli quickly put Cilic on the back foot with break points in the fourth.
The pair traded breaks before another tie-break sealed Cobolli’s place in the quarter-finals, where he hopes he will get to play on one of the Grand Slam’s main courts.
His father Stefano, a former tennis player himself who peaked at 238 in the rankings, is now his coach and was in tears as Cobolli lifted his arms to take in the crowd’s adulation after a gruelling three hours and 27 minutes on court.
Cilic, who has showed great perseverance to return to the sport after several years of injury problems, waved to all sides of the court as he departed, perhaps signalling he does not know whether he will get to play at the grass-court major again.
Cocoa and powdered chocolate prices jumped by more than 16% in the EU in May 2025 compared to the previous year. Prices in the bloc of 27 countries have been gradually increasing for the last 12 months, with annual ‘cocoa inflation’ going from 6.3% to 16.2%, according to Eurostat.
One of the major reasons behind this is that there has been a surge in the prices of cocoa beans, the main ingredient in chocolate, over the past two years. This was coupled with increases in the cost of sugar and energy.
The EU is entirely reliant on cocoa imports and accounts for more than half of the imports worldwide. The majority of the crop that is exported to the EU is grown in West Africa, where the harvest was hit by bad weather in the most important cocoa-producing regions, such as Ghana and Ivory Coast.
“Cocoa prices have almost tripled compared to the level two years ago,” Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, told Euronews Business, adding that “prices raced to record levels last year and have seen volatile patterns of trading over the past few months”.
While prices have eased from peaks above $12,000 per tonne, they remain elevated in both the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in London.
Concerns over the cocoa supply have eased a little from their peak in May 2025, to the beginning of July.
“Chocolate lovers will be relieved to hear that cocoa prices have fallen to an eight-month low in recent days and London futures today are a whopping 42% below where they were at the start of the year,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell.
London Cocoa Futures were around £5,310 ($7,236) per metric tonne on Monday, more than twice the price it was exactly two years ago.
She said that, “the fact that consumers have been willing to keep stumping up for chocolate even as prices surged has tempted growers to invest in the crop, and the supply outlook has been improving,” which explained the declining prices.
However, due to climate change-related risks, including diseases like black pod, which have been exacerbated, “some plantations have ageing treeor mays, and the trade uncertainty created by Donald Trump’s tariffs has only deepened that uncertainty which is expected to limit any downside when it comes to cocoa prices,” Danni added.
No easing of chocolate prices in Europe any time soon
As bakeries across the continent struggle to grapple with the price increase of this essential ingredient, cocoa prices in the EU and the UK are not expected to fall substantially any time soon, according to a recent report by UK-based strategic consultancy Foresight Transitions.
Global prices of cocoa beans are having a major impact on the continent’s cost of chocolate. The EU’s chocolate consumption is the highest in the world and the bloc is entirely reliant on cocoa imports, mainly from countries in West Africa, where the cocoa harvest is highly exposed to climate or biodiversity-related risks.
According to the report, escalating cocoa prices cost European jobs too, citing the world’s largest chocolate producer, Barry Callebaut, having laid off almost 20% of workers, a third of which are based in the EU, due to the rising cost of cocoa.
“The rise in the cost of cocoa, which is such a crucial ingredient, is causing a big headache for chocolate manufacturers, given that they are also having to cope with absorbing higher energy costs and wage growth,” said Streeter about the UK market. In May 2025, inflation was accompanied by a record jump in chocolate prices and the cost of chocolate was 17.7% higher than a year previously, according to ONS.
“The outlook for prices ahead remains volatile, given that unpredictable weather patterns affecting cocoa farmers, including droughts and extreme rainfall, is likely to continue longer-term,” Streeter said.
Google has been offering Android 16 for its Pixel devices for some time. Introduced almost a month ago, Google distributes its latest OS update to the Pixel 6 series onwards, including the budget Pixel 6a (curr. $154 – refurbished on Amazon). Unfortunately, it seems that the most recent Android 16 update has been causing plenty of issues with Google’s Pixel 9 generation of devices.
For instance, various Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro owners have observed that their displays will not respond even after pressing their power buttons. Apparently, the reason is that Google’s current Pixel smartphones are freezing in sleep mode, which prevents them from responding to inputs. Moreover, others have complained that auto brightness and tap to wake regularly stop working without a device reset.
Other issues include a laggy lockscreen, which appears to impact devices running on stable and beta software versions. Allegedly, Google is working to address these issues with a future update. However, it remains to be seen when this update will land for beta or stable software users. It looks like Google has already finalised its July update, though. As a result, affected owners may be left waiting for bug fixes until August at the earliest.
Alex Alderson – Senior Tech Writer – 12710 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2018
Prior to writing and translating for Notebookcheck, I worked for various companies including Apple and Neowin. I have a BA in International History and Politics from the University of Leeds, which I have since converted to a Law Degree. Happy to chat on Twitter or Notebookchat.
Whale fossils with legs found in Egypt’s desert reveal evolutionary secret – Daily Times
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Researchers have found clouds of cold gas embedded deep within larger, superheated gas clouds – or Fermi bubbles – at the Milky Way’s center. The finding challenges current models of Fermi bubble formation and reveals that the bubbles are much younger than previously estimated.
“The Fermi bubbles are enormous structures of hot gas that extend above and below the disk of the Milky Way, reaching about 25,000 light years in each direction from the galaxy’s center – spanning a total height of 50,000 light years,” says Rongmon Bordoloi, associate professor of physics at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of the research.
“Fermi bubbles are a relatively recent discovery – they were first identified by telescopes that ‘see’ gamma rays in 2010 – there are different theories about how it happened, but we do know that it was an extremely sudden and violent event, like a volcanic eruption but on a massive scale.”
Bordoloi and the research team used the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT) to observe the Fermi bubbles and get high resolution data about the composition of the gas within and the speed at which it is moving. These measurements were twice as sensitive as previous radio telescope surveys of the Fermi bubbles and allowed them to observe finer detail within the bubbles.
Most of the gas inside the Fermi bubbles is around 1 million degrees Kelvin. However, the research team also found something surprising: dense clouds of neutral hydrogen gas, each one measuring several thousand solar masses, dotted within the bubbles 12,000 light years above the center of the Milky Way.
“These clouds of neutral hydrogen are cold, relative to the rest of the Fermi bubble,” says Andrew Fox, ESA-AURA Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and coauthor of the paper.
“They’re around 10,000 degrees Kelvin, so cooler than their surroundings by at least a factor of 100. Finding those clouds within the Fermi bubble is like finding ice cubes in a volcano.”
Their existence is surprising because the hot (over 1 million degrees Kelvin), high-velocity environment of the nuclear outflow should have rapidly destroyed any cooler gas.
“Computer models of cool gas interacting with hot outflowing gas in extreme environments like the Fermi bubbles show that cool clouds should be rapidly destroyed, usually within a few million years, a timescale that aligns with independent estimates of the Fermi bubbles’ age,” Bordoloi says. “It wouldn’t be possible for the clouds to be present at all if the Fermi bubbles were 10 million years old or older.
“What makes this discovery even more remarkable is its synergy with ultraviolet observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST),” Bordoloi says. “The clouds lie along a sightline previously observed with HST, which detected highly ionized multiphase gas, ranging in temperatures from a million to 100,000 Kelvin – which is what you’d expect to see if a cold gas is getting evaporated.”
The team was also able to calculate the speed at which the gases are moving, which further confirmed the age.
“These gases are moving around a million miles per hour, which also marks the Fermi bubbles as a recent development,” Bordoloi says. “These clouds weren’t here when dinosaurs roamed Earth. In cosmic time scales, a million years is the blink of an eye.”
“We believe that these cold clouds were swept up from the Milky Way’s center and carried aloft by the very hot wind that formed the Fermi bubbles,” says Jay Lockman, an astronomer at the Green Bank Observatory and coauthor of the paper. “Just as you can’t see the motion of the wind on Earth unless there are clouds to track it, we can’t see the hot wind from the Milky Way but can detect radio emission from the cold clouds it carries along.”
This discovery challenges current understanding of how cold clouds can survive the extreme energetic environment of the Galactic Center, placing strong empirical constraints on how outflows interact with their surroundings. The findings provide a crucial benchmark for simulations of galactic feedback and evolution, reshaping our view of how energy and matter cycle through galaxies.
The work appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters and is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number AST-2206853.
-peake-
Note to editors: An abstract follows.
“A New High-latitude H I Cloud Complex Entrained in the Northern Fermi Bubble”
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/addd16
Authors: Rongmon Bordoloi, North Carolina State University; Andrew Fox, Space Telescope Science Institute; Felix Lockman, Green Bank Observatory Published: July 7 in Astrophysical Journal Letters
Abstract: We report the discovery of eleven high-velocity H I clouds at Galactic latitudes of 25–30 degrees, likely embedded in the Milky Way’s nuclear wind. The clouds are detected with deep Green Bank Telescope 21 cm observations of a 3.2◦×6.2◦ field around QSO 1H1613-097, located behind the northern Fermi Bubble. Our measurements reach 3σ limits on NHI as low as 3.1 × 1017 cm−2, more than twice as sensitive as previous H I studies of the Bubbles. The clouds span −180 ≤ vLSR ≤ −90 kms−1 and are the highest-latitude 21 cm HVCs detected inside the Bubbles. Eight clouds are spatially resolved, showing coherent structures with sizes of 4–28 pc, peak column densities of log(NHI/cm2)=17.9–18.7, and H I masses up to 1470M⊙. Several exhibit internal velocity gradients. Their presence at such high latitudes is surprising, given the short expected survival times for clouds expelled from the Galactic Center. These objects may be fragments of a larger cloud disrupted by interaction with the surrounding hot gas.
You might not be familiar with Prime Mutton. Maybe you haven’t heard his catchphrases – “absolute creamer”, “muttonista”, or the still-in-development “creamerisimo”.
If so, you’re missing out on a man who in the space of a year has created little short of a cult: an army of more than 160,000 social media fans, including celebrities, who cheer along online and in person as their leader – basically – reviews beer.
Prime Mutton, whose real name is Jason Hackett, isn’t the typical social media star. He is not, with all due respect, a beautiful twentysomething posting videos that are brightly lit with nice colors and snappy edits.
He’s a 55-year-old professional bridge player from Manchester, with a moustache, a leather pork pie hat, and a body that, he readily admits, reflects his enthusiasm for ale. The lighting in his videos is not up to professional standards, they are rife with background noise – he films the videos in bars – and his recent experiments with fonts and emojis have frequently been chaotic.
But what Prime Mutton does have is a passion: a passion for pints.
That devotion, coupled with his unvarnished persona and his “absolute creamer” catchphrase – uttered with relish when a beer meets his high standards – have been enough for him to succeed where so many Brits before him have not: he has cracked America.
“I think people, when I publish my little videos and posts, it brings them quite a lot of happiness,” Prime Mutton told the Guardian on a recent Sunday in Brooklyn.
“People, you know, wake up, they’re about to go to work, or they’re at work on their break, and it’s something that makes them happy – and it’s wholesome and authentic as well.”
Paul Giamatti with Prime Mutton. Photograph: Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian
Prime Mutton – “the brain in terms of knowledge of food and drink is prime; the body is mutton, in that I’m not exactly a honed, prime physical athletic specimen” – is on his first US tour, appearing in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and beyond. He has visited dozens of bars, drawing thousands of fans, many wearing T-shirts bearing his face or holding banners with the legend “absolute creamer”.
The in-person appearances, which Prime Mutton announces in advance on his Instagram, follow the same formula as his videos. Prime Mutton appears on camera standing in a bar, holding a pint of beer. He greets the visiting “muttonistas” – a term he coined for fans, and one which they have eagerly embraced, before announcing where he is, and which beer he is going to review.
Then the magic begins.
Sommeliers and cicerones advise that the best way to taste wine or beer is to swish it in the glass, sniff, sip, and swill it around in your mouth to really assess the flavors. Prime Mutton does not do this. Instead, he raises his pint and takes a gigantic swig, a full four or five gulps, until two-thirds of the beer is consumed. After coming up for air, he takes a few moments before delivering his verdict.
The gold standard, for Prime Mutton and his adherents, is that the beer is an “absolute creamer”. His delivery of the phrase, which he said he picked up on a visit to Ireland, sends crowds online and in person into ecstasy.
The Guardian met Prime Mutton at a bar close to where he was due to make his first appearance of the day. The idea was to have a private chat before he addressed the muttonistas. But nowhere is private for Prime Mutton these days.
As we talked, a man, in his 50s, balding, with a grey beard, spotted us through the window and began to wave, hopping up and down excitedly. The man was Paul Giamatti, Golden Globe and Emmy-winning, Oscar- and Bafta-nominated actor.
From outside, Giamatti motioned for us to stay in place – the man really can act – and ran out of view. He quickly reappeared with his son and hustled into the bar. He was wearing a black polo shirt which said “Muttonista” above an image of Prime Mutton.
Giamatti introduced himself as Paul. Rarely has a man looked happier. He asked if he could have a photo. “Of course,” said Prime Mutton – and one was taken. The two men chatted briefly before a beaming Giamatti left. I asked Prime Mutton if he knew who that was. He did not. I told him it was a famous actor.
“See, that’s not my world,” Prime Mutton said, but he did add that Giamatti “seemed very nice”.
Giamatti satiated, it was time for Prime Mutton to head to Hartley’s bar, where about 150 people had gathered in a pub designed to hold about 30 people. The majority of the crowd had to settle for a spot outside, some spilling over into the road. Mutton was here to sample the Guinness, which he had been told was among the best the city has to offer.
As we walked round the corner together, the crowd went wild. There was a primal roar, like people cheering a musician as they emerge at the Super Bowl. This was Mutton as a more conservatively dressed, somewhat heavier Kendrick Lamar – a rough and ready British interpretation of American celebrity.
Inside, an area had been spaced out for Prime Mutton to taste the bar’s Guinness. A hush went over the crowd as he was presented with a pint. He raised it to his lips and paused, a showman teasing his audience. Then he drank, gulp after gulp, as he drained more than two-thirds of the beer.
Prime Mutton set the glass down on the bar. He smacked his lips. Foam hung on his moustache. Tension hung in the air.
The crowd was now completely silent. Their entire focus was on this man, wearing a pork pie hat and suspenders, a man about to make days or crush dreams. Hairs on the backs of necks were raised. Which way would Caesar Mutton’s thumb point?
He paused, considering his decision.
“That’s good. It’s very good actually,” Prime Mutton said, but there was more. “However, I can’t say it’s the best pint I’ve had in New York.”
Hearts sank. His assessment wasn’t over, however.
“But it’s still so good,” Prime Mutton said, “that I’m going to call it an absolute creamer.”
Prime Mutton with fans. Photograph: Prime Mutton
An almighty cheer went up. People went wild. Men jumped up and down and hugged each other. High fives were exchanged between strangers. A woman nearly fell off a stool. The muttonistas, much like Prime Mutton’s thirst, had been sated.
“He’s completely endearing, and sort of what I need in my heart right now, given the state of the world,” said Nick Lucchesi, as Prime Mutton polished off the rest of his pint.
“I mean, look at him. He’s smiling and kind of quite Mancunian in all the best ways.”
Lucchesi had already seen Mutton once on this tour, but came back for more, cycling across Brooklyn to lend his support.
“He’s certainly a wonderful bloke. I just feel like: who doesn’t like a Guinness? And a nice guy dropping a catchphrase and talking about it? It makes you feel good,” he said.
Others echoed the sentiment. And at a time when male influencers are frequently awful, it’s true that Mutton offers something different from the rest. He’s not ordering young men to dunk their heads in ice at 3.50am. He’s not a misogynist, he’s not racist, he doesn’t belittle anyone, he’s basically … not a dickhead.
He’s just a man, a man who likes drinking beer, who likes making his videos, and likes bringing people joy.
At a time when a lot is wrong with society, when many of us have found ourselves searching for something real and grounded and normal, who wouldn’t want to be a muttonista?
After a slow spring, investment firms of the ultra-rich made 60 direct investments in June, according to Fintrx.
Family offices flocked to biotech and health-care firms such as Antheia, seeking to make an impact and returns at the same time.
Antheia founder Christina Smolke told CNBC’s Inside Wealth family offices’ patient capital makes them a good fit for investing in scientific breakthroughs.
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. For investment firms of the ultra-wealthy, deal-making is heating up. In June, family offices made 60 direct investments in companies, ending three straight months of declining deal activity, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx. June’s tally is an improvement over the 47 deals recorded in May , though it marks a 40% drop on a year-over-year basis, per the private wealth platform. June saw a few buzzy deals in entertainment. The investment firm for Nintendo’s founding family bought a minority stake in indie film studio K2 Pictures for an undisclosed amount. Yamauchi No. 10 Family Office is also investing in the startup’s film production fund, a Hollywood-esque financing strategy that is rare in Japan. Stateside, Blackstone billionaire David Blitzer joined a $20 million fundraise for Ballers, a members club for sports including padel and virtual golf. A slew of professional athletes, including tennis Hall of Famer Andre Agassi, also participated in the round. But biotech and health care proved to be more popular themes, accounting for nine deals by heavy-hitter family offices. Narcan ingredient maker Antheia raised a $56 million Series C with investors including family offices Athos KG and S-Cubed Capital. Athos KG’s principals, billionaire twins Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann, made their fortune with generic drugmaker Hexal and invested in Covid vaccine maker BioNTech . S-Cubed Capital is helmed by billionaire and former Sequoia partner Mark Stevens. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Hillspire has been an investor in Antheia since its $73 million Series B in 2021. Scientist-turned-entrepreneur Christina Smolke co-founded Antheia in 2015 after discovering how to bioengineer yeast to manufacture opioids for medical use in less than two weeks. Typically, the process of producing hydrocodone from opium poppies can take two years between farming, harvesting and extraction, Smolke said in an interview with CNBC. Smolke, a Stanford professor with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, told Inside Wealth that family offices, which tend to invest with long investment horizons, are well suited for biotechnology investments. “These are complicated problems. There’s not a sort of a quick patch that we’re going to put on this,” she said. “Family offices tend to be able to be patient with their investments, and that aligns really well with the cycles and the timelines that are needed for biotech and to bring new products, new technology and new transformation, at a system level, to healthcare.” In late 2024, Antheia launched its first product, thebaine, a key ingredient in overdose reversal medication Narcan. The recent fundraise will allow Antheia to expand production from Europe to the U.S. and bring other products to market. The Menlo Park, California-based firm is developing 70-plus pharmaceutical ingredients necessary for medicines used to treat cancer, bacterial infections, seizures and other conditions. “The core aspect that’s shared through all of this is being able to rebuild these essential medicine supply chains so that drug shortages become a thing of the past and access, globally, becomes more equitable,” she said. For impact-driven family offices, biotechnology can serve as a familiar frontier, Smolke said. “It can speak to investors very directly,” she said. “I think everybody has actually directly experienced challenges with drug shortages — even in the U.S. — of going to the supermarket and having cold medicines out of stock or not being able to get certain antibiotics.”
WASHINGTON and LEXINGTON PARK, Md., July 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Saalex Corporation, a leading provider of defense and technology solutions, today announced its acquisition of Greenfield Engineering Corporation. Greenfield is a premier software and systems engineering firm specializing in avionics software development for the U.S. Navy.
This strategic acquisition significantly enhances Saalex’s software development capabilities, particularly in highly specialized avionics software for complex real-time systems. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Lexington Park, MD, Greenfield has established itself as a trusted partner to NAVAIR with expertise in embedded real-time software development, configuration management, and program management support for naval aviation platforms. The company’s 61 employees will join Saalex Corporation, with integration beginning immediately upon closing July 3, 2025.
“The acquisition of Greenfield Engineering demonstrates the Saalex Corporation commitment to supporting the warfighter and growing our software development capabilities in highly sensitive and secure DOD environments,” said Travis Mack, Chairman and CEO of Saalex Corporation. “I am extremely pleased to continue our expansion and growth in the Patuxent Maryland area.”
Will Weston, President and CEO of Greenfield Engineering, will remain with Saalex to ensure continuity of service excellence and support the integration process. “Joining Saalex Corporation represents an exciting opportunity for Greenfield Engineering to expand our capabilities while maintaining our commitment to supporting critical naval aviation programs,” said Weston. “This partnership will enable us to better serve our customers while providing growth opportunities for our team.”
The acquisition builds upon Saalex’s recent Spalding acquisition, creating a complementary presence in the Patuxent River area and establishing a strong foundation for continued growth in software development services. Greenfield’s specialized expertise in avionics software development, combined with its strong NAVAIR relationships and significant contract backlog, positions the combined organization for continued success in supporting critical defense programs.
About Saalex Corporation: Saalex Corporation is a leading Aerospace & Defense services company specializing in providing Test Range Operations, IT & cybersecurity, Engineering, Unmanned Robotic Process Automation (URPA), Software Development, and Training/Wargaming Support services to the Department of Defense. With a proven track record of delivering exceptional value and mission-driven solutions, Saalex has been a trusted partner to government agencies for over 25 years.
