India has successfully tested its first private-sector orbital rocket, marking a milestone in New Delhi's ambition to become a major player in the global space economy. The three-stage 22-metre Vikram-1 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and deployed customer payloads into a 450km (280-mile) low-Earth orbit, making India the third country to achieve orbital launch capability through private enterprise. It also carried experimental equipment, a lab-grown diamond and a miniature 18-carat gold sculpture commemorating India's national space programme. India Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the achievement, saying that it will "encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly". Founded in 2018, Skyroot is among a new generation of Indian space startups that have attracted backing from global investors following the sector's liberalisation.

Is the war entering a new phase? Ukrainian drone attacks in western Russia have killed at least eight people and wounded dozens, according to local officials, as Ukraine and Russia continue to exchange strikes. Tambov Governor Evgeniy Pervyshov said on Saturday that an attack on Kotovsk struck a warehouse owned by Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer. Another 25 people were wounded, including one person in critical condition and six seriously, with most of the injuries caused by shrapnel, he said. According to the governor, 28 drones had been intercepted.

Imagine you want to teach a robot to push an object on a table. The standard recipe in robot learning is to collect hundreds of expert demonstrations on a real robot, train an imitation learning policy on that data, and then evaluate the policy by running it many times on the same real robot. Both stages (data collection and evaluation) are slow, expensive, and hard to reproduce: hardware breaks, lighting changes, objects drift out of place, and every new task means more hours in the lab. A natural question is whether we can replace some of this real-robot work with a simulator. Classical physics-based simulators are powerful, but building one for a new task means manually modeling geometries, contacts, friction, and deformation, and the resulting simulator often still does not match reality closely enough for policies trained inside it to transfer.

Apple regains top spot as world's most valuable company Apple has surpassed chipmaker Nvidia as the world's most valuable company as artificial intelligence-driven market pressures weigh on investors. Apple is now worth $4.88 trillion compared with Nvidia's $4.86 trillion, following a 3.5 percent decline in Nvidia's market value. The milestone marks the first time the Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has held the top spot in more than a year. Last month, Apple unveiled a revamped version of its assistant, Siri AI, which enables the personal assistant to better understand the personal context of users' questions, access real-time information from the Web, and perform more complex tasks on behalf of users. "Market sentiment has shifted from rewarding model makers, then to semis, and now on to those companies that can turn compute into experiences and outcomes the customer will pay for, thus driving corporate earnings," Michael Monaghan, founder of Founder ETFs, told Al Jazeera. "Apple investors first questioned Apple's lower AI spend, but now have treated Apple's lower AI capital expenditure as an advantage, with the bull case being that Apple benefits from consumer AI without spending at cloud-infrastructure scale."

'This is an apartheid regime' Does Trump have real leverage over Netanyahu? Multiple Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 14 Palestinians, more than half of them in a drone strike on a funeral procession. Nine months into its so-called "ceasefire" with Hamas, Israel continues to violate it on a near-daily basis. At least 20 others were injured, the Al-Awda Hospital added. Witnesses said the drone targeted Palestinian mourners gathered outside the Ahmad Yassin Mosque as they waited to begin a funeral procession for a Palestinian killed in a separate attack earlier in the day in the same area.

Iran issues grim new order to citizens after US strikes'hit power plants' as conflict spirals Air passenger'invokes Sharia law' to avoid sitting next to a woman - before slapping stewardess who confronted him on flight from Turkey JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette's REAL dying moments revealed in horrifying minute-by-minute detail: Her passenger seat terror... the graveyard spiral... violent moment of impact... and his last five words My husband seemed the perfect family man. But for years he was drugging me, raping me and filming it. Meghan would have felt'humiliated' as rows overshadowed UK trip, her friends tell People magazine What Ritalin really does to you: I took the ADHD drug for years but these were the terrifying and hidden side-effects that made me ditch the tablets. He was handsome, charming and so rich... but my extreme age-gap romance went nightmarishly wrong when I learned what he was REALLY into behind closed doors Experts reveal what ONE day of breathing America's toxic wildfire smoke does to your body as millions in 16 states are told to stay indoors Is George Clooney selling his $100M Lake Como party pad? Legendary holiday home has hosted the Obamas, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Emily Blunt's wedding The'Taylor Swift problem' hanging over the wedding of her'one that got away' ex Matty Healy, revealed by DOLLY BUSBY: 'He really did love her.

Japan's parliament has enacted a controversial law introducing criminal penalties for desecrating the national flag. The passage of the legislation on Friday is part of an ongoing drive by staunchly conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to promote traditional patriotism and correct what her supporters call a "wrong" legal double standard. Under the newly enacted law, violators who publicly damage, remove or defile the national flag in a manner that causes others "extreme discomfort or disgust" face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 200,000 yen ($1,250). According to Japanese broadcaster Kyodo News, the law covers physical acts of vandalism such as stomping, burning, or throwing mud in public spaces, as well as livestreaming such acts. The law drafting committee, led by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, carved out highly specific legal exemptions. The ruling party clarified that the new law completely exempts physical paintings, digital media including anime, manga, video games, and generative AI, and even the miniature paper flags famously used to decorate children's restaurant meals.

This year, RoboCup took place in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event saw teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. Take a look at what the participants got up to in our round up from social media. RoboCup 2026 officially begins today! A post shared by RoboCup Federation (@robocup.official)

Why has British Steel been nationalised? British Steel has been taken into public ownership after years of uncertainty over the future of the steelworks. It comes months after the UK government took control of the company's plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, though it was still owned by China's Jingye Group. What is British Steel and why is it important? British Steel's Scunthorpe plant employs 2,700 people, about three-quarters of the company's workforce.

The forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) took place in Seoul, South Korea from 6-11 July. We take a look at what the participants got up to during the event. The PC Chairs are presenting the welcome remarks. One of the best conference dinners I've ever had. Try TimeChat-Captioner (at #ICML2026) -- a videoLLM that generates dense, time-aware captions for long videos.