Home-grown rice is a key part of Japanese culture, identity and politics, dating back thousands of years.
So much so that any disruption can spark a wave of consumer anger, reaching even the highest echelons of power. But as the country grapples with a shortage of the grain, locals are asking whether it’s finally time to learn to love the imported version.
Reged Ahmad speaks to the Guardian’s Japan and Korea correspondent, Justin McCurry, in Osaka.
Mariona is one of the five captains picked by Tomé, encouraged to create a core leadership group within a squad that is stacked with world class talent in every position.
She joins Olga Carmona, Irene Paredes, Aitana Bonmatí, and Alexia Putellas as the team’s leadership quintet. That being said, the Mallorcan does not see it as a huge change to the previous dynamic that led La Roja to World Cup glory.
“I don’t think that the role has changed so much to say that you are captain,” Mariona explained. “There are many experienced and influential players that the team will listen to. The two main captains are Irene [Paredes] and Alexia [Putellas], they are the best role models and captains that we could have. When they speak, everyone goes quiet.”
Mariona comes into the continental tournament already a European champion at club level. Having left FC Barcelona after a decade for Arsenal last year, she helped the London side to UEFA Women’s Champions League glory for the first time since 2007.
A lot has changed in women’s football since then, especially for the Spanish national team, who have gone through immense transformation.
Companies have struggled to adopt the right AI tools as the technology evolves at a far faster pace than their slow sales cycles.
Corporate credit card company Brex is no different. The startup found itself facing the same issue as its enterprise counterparts. The upshot: Brex completely changed its approach to software procurement to ensure it wouldn’t get left behind.
At the HumanX AI conference in March, Brex CTO James Reggio told TechCrunch that the company initially tried to assess these software tools through its usual procurement strategy. The startup quickly discovered its months-long piloting process was just not going to work.
“In the first year following ChatGPT, when all these new tools were coming on the scene, the procurement process itself would actually run so long that the teams that were asking to procure a tool lost interest in the tool by the time that we actually got through all of the necessary internal controls,” Reggio said.
That’s when Brex realized it had to completely rethink its procurement process.
The company started by coming up with a new framework for data processing agreements and legal validations for bringing on AI tools, Reggio said. This allowed Brex to vet potential AI tools more quickly and get them into the hands of testers faster.
Reggio said the company uses a “superhuman product-market-fit test” to figure out what tools are worth investing in beyond the pilot program. This approach gives employees a much larger role in deciding what tools the company should adopt based on where they are finding value, he added.
“We go deep with the folks who are getting the most value out of the tool to figure out whether it is actually unique enough to retain,” Reggio said. “We’re basically, I would say, about two years into this new era where there’s 1,000 AI tools within our company. And we’ve definitely canceled and not renewed maybe five to 10 different larger deployments.”
Brex gives its engineers a monthly budget of $50 to license whichever software tools they want from an approved list.
“By delegating that spending authority to the individuals who are going to be leveraging this, they make the optimal decisions for optimizing their workflows,” Reggio said. “It’s actually really interesting and we haven’t seen a convergence. I think that that has also validated the decision to make it easy to try a bunch of different tools, is that we haven’t seen everybody just rush in and say, ‘I want Cursor.’”
This approach has helped the company figure out where it needs broader licensing deals for software too based on a more accurate headcount of how many engineers are using what.
Overall, Reggio said the best way for enterprises to approach the current AI innovation cycle, in his opinion, is to “embrace the messiness” and accept that figuring out which tools to adopt will be a bumpy process and that’s okay.
“Knowing that you’re not going to always make the right decision out of the gate is just like paramount to making sure that you don’t get left behind,” Reggio said. “I think the one mistake that we could make is to overthink this and spend six to nine months evaluating everything very carefully before we deploy it. And you don’t know what the world is going to look like nine months from now.”
50 Cent adds another victory for the green light gang and a birthday gift in the form of another lucrative deal. Coinciding with the G-Unit head’s 50th birthday on Sunday (July 6), the 50 Cent Action channel has officially launched on Pluto TV.
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In partnership with Lionsgate, 50 Cent Action will stream a free lineup of cinematic thrillers and blockbuster series personally curated by the rap and film mogul.
Celebrating 50’s birthday weekend, 50 Cent Action launches with a Curtis Collection of movies starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, including Freelancers, Righteous Kill, Fire with Fire, Set Up, Blood Out and Caught in the Crossfire.
“I’m excited to bring 50 Cent Action to Pluto TV. Building on the channel’s success, this is the next big step — and launching on my birthday makes it even bigger,” 50 Cent said in a statement to Billboard. “I’ve partnered with Lionsgate to deliver nonstop, high-powered entertainment, and now even more fans can watch for free.”
Launched in 2013 and based in Los Angeles, Pluto TV is a streaming service owned by Paramount Studios with over 250 channels. Before landing on Pluto TV, 50 Cent Action is available on Roku, LG, Prime Video, Sling TV and DIRECTV.
50 Cent
Courtesy of Pluto TV
The grind never stops for 50 as he continues to build his film empire. The Queens legend has also been cast in Street Fighter, where he’ll play the role of Balrog, who’s a former boxer playing the security guard for the movie’s main villain.
There are more roles on the way, as 50 will also star in a horror film titled SkillHouse, which hits theaters in July, and Deon Taylor’s upcoming Free Agents.
Keeping up with Karen Pittman has been a tall order in June.
The actress, one of the stars of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show who recently starred on Forever on Netflix, spent a big chunk of the month in Europe where she attended back-to-back film festivals with Filming Italy Sardegna followed by a pit stop in Malta for the Mediterrane Film Festival’s closing night Golden Bee Awards.
It was on the latter’s blue carpet where Pittman offered The Hollywood Reporter a few minutes of her time before she headed inside to the black-tie gala at which she presented a trophy alongside Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier. “It’s amazing. It’s beautiful,” she said of her first impressions of Malta. “It’s an extraordinary island. The weather, the sights, the architecture, everything. But what I love most about Malta is the people — warm, inviting, welcoming. I would love to come back here and film something. As an artist, you want to be in a community and in an environment that is just like this.”
Though she’s been doing a bit of globe-trotting, Pittman said she’s always keeping an eye on what’s happening in America, especially as one of the stars of a show centering on the news.
“Coming to Europe has been this extraordinary experience because they don’t look at news the way that American television news looks at news,” explained Pittman, who acknowledged the “difficult” and “turbulent” landscape of American politics. “I stay tuned in on behalf of the work that I do on The Morning Show. I also think it’s important as an artist to be in the know. I look at my acting as activism, and so I know a lot about what roles I want to take and what I want to do next based upon what my own personal politics are, but also what the world is telling me, what’s orbiting us as human beings. It’s really important for me to pay attention.”
Speaking of being alert, The Morning Show will drop a new batch of season four episodes on Sept. 17. “It’s a wild ride,” teased Pittman of the upcoming season in which she reprises her character of Mia Jordan. “We are going to be in New York and Europe in September. We are taking the story much wider, I feel like, than we’ve ever taken it before. I’m so excited to be a part of the story that they’re telling in season four. A lot happens with Mia. She goes for it. A lot happens for a lot of people.”
Sony and Microsoft don’t sweat Nintendo. At least, that’s the corporate line — they still might be coming for Nintendo’s ass.
Sony has shrugged off the notion that the PlayStation brand, with high-end graphics and adult-friendly play, could be considered in the same market as Nintendo’s Switch. Meanwhile, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer openly dreamt of porting games to Switch and intends to support the Switch 2 through his expansive (while consolidated) hopes for Xbox. Nintendo pioneer Shigeru Miyamoto is happy to “not get involved in what is sometimes called the ‘game war.’“ Companies to gamers: ✌️❤️
But for all the tunnel vision, everyone looks ready to rumble. The Switch 2’s specs inch Nintendo closer to offering the current-gen experience of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in handheld form. PlayStation has responded with murmurs of its own handheld plans, while Xbox hopes to turn every device into an Xbox. But the counter to Nintendo isn’t all a hardware game. At this year’s Summer Game Fest, a slew of games played like legit competition to the first-party games that have remained under Nintendo’s lock and key.
No, you won’t play the next 3D Mario game on a PlayStation without hacking your console… but you may come close?
There has been no shortage of Nintendo clones over the last 40 years, but rarely does, say, a DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing hit like the real Nintendo first-party equivalent. Case in point: Astro Bot, such a revelation in terms of letting a platformer team cook with the time and standards of a Nintendo game that it easily swept up Game of the Year awards throughout 2024. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet attributed the success to a small team (60 people), compact gameplay (around 12 hours) and constant review process that meant Asobi was never “compromising the players’ happiness.”
Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi has agonized in public over a dream to condense the development cycle of the company’s games, but doesn’t waver on a need for quality. It is the same Takahashi who, after all, scrapped all of Metroid Prime 4 in 2019 in favor of rebooting it (with shipping planned for fall 2025). Maybe a little competition in the software department between the home of Zelda and the other titan video game publishers would be a good thing.
Takashi Iizuka, the head of Sega’s Sonic Team, is reaching for that level of precision with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. After just an hour of racing — and during the launch week of Mario Kart World nonetheless! — CrossWorlds played like a true high-speed alternative to the Nintendo franchise. The races moved at a clip, the PS5-level graphics were crisp and kinetic, and while the course designers throw racers a curveball with the addition of ring portals that transport you to a new track mid-race, the cups I was able to play were traditional lap-style experiences (which may speak to a select perturbed Mario Kart racer right now).
CrossWorlds, which is out Sept. 25 across all consoles, can’t match the sheer number of available racers packed into Mario Kart World — and announced additions like Hatsune Miku, Minecraft, and SpongeBob feel more like cheap Fortnite season skins than an expansion of the Sega pantheon — but as a racing game, it’s as good as what Nintendo can do with a modern racer, minus the need to own a Switch 2. And as Iizuka has boasted, it actually has cross-play.
A single game summoning the non-Nintendo Nintendo spirit of Astro Bot wouldn’t be a trend, but then I played Lego Party. Developer SMG Studios is really not hiding anything with the title: The multiplayer game, due out later this year across all consoles, is just Mario Party with Legos. Maybe that’s creatively bankrupt, but it’s also a hoot.
Staged on a Lego-constructed game board— which the team at SMG Studios says was fully “constructed” using scanned bricks — players take turns spinning for spaces, navigating multiple paths, springing booby traps, matching reflexes in an array of minigames, and trading smack-talk (this is not built into the game, but inevitable as competitors swing in and out of first place). SMG puts the full Lego twist on every aspect of the game, including decisions on which parts of the board to even construct mid-play. Some minigames rely heavily on builds, while others rely solely on Lego Movie energy to create humorous frenzy. I laughed out loud several times in my 30-minute, six-turn run, running in both directions around a pirate-themed board — opposed to screaming in agony like I do during any Mario Party bonus star round.
This month’s Donkey Kong Bananza is likely to remind players why Nintendo, Astro Bot be damned, is in its own AAA platformer/adventure lane — the Super Mario Odyssey team goes big. But for all the promised scope, I couldn’t help but think the sicko energy of Super Meat Boy 3D, which premiered first-look footage on June’s Xbox Showcase stream, might be what retro-platformer heads (who complained about Astro Boy’s easy challenges) are actually craving.
Team Meat’s 2026 release promises to bring the velocity and difficulty of the original 2010 Super Meat Boy to an isometric 3D world. The stages gush with color — and an excessive number of razor-edged traps should add an extra coat of Meat Boy-red to the backgrounds. Simple, and if the physics have been meticulously perfected, effective platforming entertainment.
New first-party releases have always been half of the pleasure of owning a Switch, with the deep well of NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, and N64 releases turning the console into the ultimate easy-emulation machine. With the addition of GameCube games to Switch 2, I have already found myself drifting from Mario Kart World to the pleasures of Nintendo history. I didn’t need upgraded hardware to play The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Soulcalibur 2, and Donkey Kong Country, but Switch 2 does make classics look and play better than ever.
But even Nintendo’s exclusive archives face competition from indie studios that are pushing retro history with modern sensibilities. This July’s Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is an immaculate recreation of the franchise’s side-scroller NES trilogy with variable difficulties and loads of action. Like Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge before it, Tribute Games’ upcoming beat-’em-up Marvel Cosmic Invasion feels recovered from the mid-1990s, but takes full advantage of movesets that make each playable hero unique and tag-team combo systems that feel more like Marvel vs. Capcom than a brawler.
Moonlighter 2, which pivots from the first game’s 2D look to 3D, served Zelda-but-make-it-roguelike on the SGF floor, with some unique shopkeeper mechanics that made it more than a Hades riff. Meanwhile, Mina the Hollower, from Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games, played like an actual 2D Zelda game I somehow never got around to (and with one phenomenal twist: You can burrow underground to assist in combat and puzzles).
I know we’re not supposed to compare Digimon and Pokémon, but when the upcoming Time Stranger has RPG fans who never gave the virtual pets the time of day shaking with excitement, while Pokémon devotees are simply praying this fall’s PokémonLegends: Z-A runs smoother than Scarlet and Violet, I can only wonder if Nintendo is feeling the heat. Or if Sony, Microsoft, and the major publishers think they can finally take on the monolithic family-friendly brand. They should. With all due respect to Miyamoto, the “game war” raises the bar for everyone. Imagine what a Nintendo that faced true competition would come up with next.
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The Reserve Bank is expected to cut the cash rate for the third time this year on Tuesday, in a move that will give further relief to millions of householders with a mortgage – and hopefully spark some life into Australia’s struggling economy.
The economics teams at Australia’s four largest banks are now unanimous that the RBA board will lower the central bank’s cash rate target by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.6% at the end of the board’s two-day meeting.
Traders in financial markets are even more bullish, pricing in consecutive 0.25 percentage point rate cuts in July and August, followed by a third by November.
That would take the cash rate to 3.1% from 3.85%, but experts are less convinced rates will fall that far this year, with most suggesting two cuts, rather than three, is more likely.
Whatever the case, the outcome will mean interest bills will be hundreds of dollars lower for borrowers, who emerged from the pandemic period with more debt than ever.
A rate cut on Tuesday will drop the repayment on a $500,000 home loan from $3,200 per month to $3,124 – a saving of $76.
That’s a saving of about $230 per month by the time the RBA rate cuts in February, May and potentially next week are passed on to borrowers.
So far, however, the prospect of lower interest bills for the 3.3m mortgaged households has done surprisingly little to boost consumer spending.
Total household spending has barely budged this year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with signs of life only emerging in the latest figures from May.
NAB’s head of market economics, Tapas Strickland, said consumption was on track for another weak quarter.
“That still argues to the view that the RBA should cut rates next week, and quickly bring the cash rate down towards neutral” – or to 3.1% by November, he said.
Retail sales have been particularly weak.
After bouncing around wildly as the country went in and out of Covid lockdowns, sales per person, and after adjusting for inflation, have steadily declined to be only 4.5% above pre-pandemic levels, according to figures provided by AMP.
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While inflation is now firmly under 3% and expected to stay there for the foreseeable future, Australia remains a much more expensive place, a fact we are reminded of every day.
Prices are 21% higher than they were five years ago, according to the ABS’s consumer price index (CPI).
Belinda Allen, a senior economist at CBA, said she had been surprised by how consumption was not picking up in response to falling inflation, climbing wages and lower interest rates.
The CBA’s internal data on its millions of banking customers suggest many Australians are keeping the extra cash in their pockets.
“We see roughly one-third of all transactions in the economy, (and) there just does seem to have been this shift by the consumer to save and pay down debt rather than spend,” Allen said.
“We’ve been waiting for this to shift, and it looks like it’s taking longer than we expected.”
Allen’s early theory is that households remain “scarred” by the experience of the past few years.
This reticence to spend, alongside the potential fallout from Donald Trump’s trade war, is a key risk to what is otherwise a reasonably positive outlook for the Australian economy in the months ahead, she said.
Kartal 3-3 Pavlyuchenkova*
Kartal starts strongly for a 30-0 lead, but Pavlyuchenkova battles back to 30-30.
Then Kartal moves to 40-30, before Pavlyuchenkova again levels the score.
The Russian earns break point, and she takes it with a cute drop shot! But only after making Kartal run alllll over the place.
Phenomenal running by the Briton. Credit to her.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 14:03
*Kartal 3-2 Pavlyuchenkova
Kartal breaks again, and from 0-2 down, she’s 3-2 up!
Great running from the Briton in that game, and the best point saw her get to a very shallow drop shot before flicking the ball right onto the baseline – beating a flummoxed Pavlyuchenkova.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:57
Taylor Fritz took the first set against Jordan Thompson, 6-1, before getting a walkover at 3-0 in the second set!
Thompson withdrew due to injury, unfortunately. Next up for Fritz, in the quarters, is Kachanov.
On the women’s side, Solana Sierra and Laura Siegemund were about to get going when some rain delayed the start of their match.
The weather seems to be improving a tad, so hopefully they’ll begin soon.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:56
Kartal 2-2 Pavlyuchenkova*
Kartal scores first on serve, before she slices a backhand long. 15-15.
Now Pavlyuchenkova nets a backhand. 30-15.
Lovely pass! Forehand winner up the line from Kartal, after some aggressive, come-forward play by Pavlyuchenkova. 40-15.
And there’s hold, as a serve kicks up on Pavlyuchenkova, who pulls her backhand into the trams.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:53
Kartal 0-2 Pavlyuchenkova*
Another break point, as a ground shot from Pavlyuchenkova clips the baseline and Kartal errs.
And Pavlyuchenkova takes it! She draws in Kartal with a drop shot, and Kartal has an easy pass available… but throws up a tame lob!
A volleyed lob response by Pavlyuchenkova is nice, but Kartal could’ve gotten there if she’d tried! Strange moment.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:47
An ace from Kartal to open her first service game, and the crowd is cooing already! 15-0.
A well-angled couple of groundstrokes from Pavlyuchenkova on the next points, however, draw an error out of Kartal. The Brit slices into the net. 15-15.
Now Kartal strikes a forehand long. 15-30. The crowd is already rallying behind the home player.
Kartal levels the game before Pavlyuchenkova drags a cross-court forehand wide. 40-30.
A similar shot from Pavlyuchenkova, but this time she makes it! Winner, deuce.
And a great step-in backhand on the second serve hands the Russian advantage. Break point…
Saved! The tourist frames a forehand out of play.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:45
*Kartal 0-1 Pavlyuchenkova
A perfect start for Pavlyuchenkova, who holds to love thanks to some big serving.
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:40
The warm-ups are complete. We’re under way on Centre Court!
Alex Pattle6 July 2025 13:39
The Steam Summer Sale 2025 event is still rolling, and many of the top-rated games are sitting at their all-time low prices. However, for those who are more interested in freebies, a bunch of new free games were recently spotted on the platform. These $0 titles have launched anywhere between mid-June and late June, and here’s more info about the ones with good player ratings:
@SteamGamesPC on X (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Abid’s journey as a technophile began when he first assembled his PC. Since then, his insatiable curiosity has driven him to delve into every aspect of this rapidly evolving technological landscape. And as a tech reporter, he prioritizes transparency, accuracy, and unbiasedness.