Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI? Something mysterious has been happening in the world of secondhand books. Over the last few months independent booksellers have been observing a strange pattern of purchases which have seen scores of their novels being shipped to far-off warehouses. In a typical week, Stuart Manley, from Barter Books, in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books. But one recent single bulk order from a Canadian company equalled what he would expect to move in seven days.

Look Up Say More Safety Net Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Here's why some of the observatory's solar system pictures are ugly. Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds . Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling.

Taiwan's opposition-controlled parliament has approved the government's annual budget, preserving funding for a drone programme central to the island's defence plans against China. Lawmakers passed the $93bn budget late on Friday, after a record 266 days of political deadlock and its legal deadline, as President William Lai Ching-te's administration, which lost its parliamentary majority in 2024, continues to clash with opposition parties over government spending. The Kuomintang dropped the proposed cut after concluding there was no wasteful overlap between the development and procurement programmes it had initially cited as justification. Other reductions included a 60 percent cut to special allowances for government agency heads, a 2.5 percent cut to military equipment and facilities spending, and a 50 percent cut to media policy and publicity budgets. Before Friday's vote, the government had been operating under a provisional budget mechanism to keep paying civil servants and funding welfare programmes.

Democrats talk a lot about affordability. Could a message of prosperity be more powerful? The Washington Roundtable's Evan Osnos interviews the former Commerce Secretary and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo about a problem she's been working on since she left the Biden Administration: how to make sure that the A.I. revolution does not leave American workers behind. Drawing on her father's experience of losing his factory job in the wake of outsourcing to China, Raimondo warns against repeating the mistakes of the past and argues that the U.S. needs a plan to help workers navigate the A.I. transition. "We can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle. A.I. is out there," Raimondo says.

Can robots save an aging Japan? A mechanical wolf robot used to ward off bears and wild boars at a cabbage farm in the village of Shimo Higashiyama, in Yamagata Prefecture. It's hard to explain why Japanese love the cherry blossoms, called sakura. Robots do not appreciate the soft evanescence of the sakura. Nor do they understand why a snowbound town in northern Japan has dedicated itself to the cultivation of a winter variety. But the residents of Nishikawa have discovered -- at least, they thought they had discovered -- that they need robots for their sakura.

'Row professor found dead' and'barbecue ban' Image caption, At the top of the Times is the news that ex-Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who has been at the centre of a row in-part focused on accusations of plagiarism, has been found dead. The police have said his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious. Also on the front page, Burnham calls up the military to tackle fires. Image caption, In the lead for the Daily Telegraph is that men lose right to prostate cancer test. The Telegraph also includes the news of Arday's death, noting that his memoir is due to be published in the UK later in August.

BBC seeks to subpoena Trump's family members in Panorama lawsuit The BBC has sought to subpoena members of Donald Trump's family for documents and testimony as it defends against the US president's $10bn (£7.4bn) defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster. Court filings show that representatives for the BBC's legal team attempted in May to serve subpoenas to the president's son Donald Trump Jr., his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The president is suing the BBC over an episode of Panorama that edited together two different sections of a speech he gave before the 2021 Capitol riots. The BBC has previously apologised for the edit but denied it was grounds for defamation. Judge grants Trump's request to delay handing financial records to BBC In the latest filing, the BBC's lawyers argue Trump's family members have personal knowledge of his intentions in delivering the speech, making their testimony and documents relevant to the president's defamation claim.

New York City Lawmakers Push to'Ban the Scan' at MSG At a press conference outside Madison Square Garden, politicians, musicians, and privacy advocates argued for tighter restrictions on how public venues deploy biometric surveillance. Privacy advocates and musicians rallied outside Madison Square Garden on Friday, pushing for new legislation to prevent facial-recognition technology at the venue and other public spaces in New York City. "MSG and its CEO, James Dolan, have been flagrantly abusing biotechnology," City Council member Shahana Hanif said at the event on Friday, after leading a chant of "ban the scan." In January, Hanif proposed a bill that would prohibit public venues from using biometric recognition tech such as Madison Square Garden's facial-recognition systems. Madison Square Garden is well-known for its biometric data collection practices .

Fires across England and Wales have prompted a national government alert warning people not to light anything that could spark a wildfire. The warning on Friday evening came as it was revealed 19 homes were destroyed and a further 18 damaged in a huge fire in Stourbridge, West Midlands, that spread rapidly through grass and woodland on Thursday before damaging homes. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told members of the public to take the warning seriously, adding it was triggered at the request of firefighters. West Midlands Fire Service chief fire officer Simon Tuhill said the Stourbridge blaze was one of the most significant incidents the service had ever dealt with. It was one of several fires being dealt with across England and Wales on Friday.

Jason Arday, the former University of Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row, has been found dead. Emergency services said a man was found unresponsive at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon. Metropolitan Police officers were called by the London Ambulance Service. A 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene and his next of kin have been informed, the force said. Arday resigned as a Cambridge professor of sociology of education last week after allegations of plagiarism and questions about some of his achievements.