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The Princeton Review’s Best Classroom Experience placed four California colleges in its top 20, with two of them cracking the top 10.

"Requests are coming in from Swift's friends where they say 'event' or 'private occasion.' It's so tight lipped," says a source.

Andrew Wiggins is a part of the Miami Heat's plans after all.

The renowned Christmas toy store where toys came to life in the Tom Hanks movie "Big" is opening a second location. 

Former First Lady Jill Biden’s memoir had a brief run atop the New York Times bestseller list before tumbling out of the rankings just weeks later — fueling online speculation that its lofty debut owed more to bulk book orders than to sustained reader demand. “View from the East Wing,” which was published by Simon...

Chaotic video captured the moment a helicopter violently tossed and turned after an emergency landing, with two passengers seen being rag-dolled inside. The incident occurred in China’s Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, on June 11, after the helicopter’s tail broke off. The passengers were hospitalized with ‘non-critical injuries.’

Mega Heat Dome Inbound For Washington, DC

A massive heat dome is set to descend on the eastern half of the U.S., stretching from the Midwest to the East Coast and putting more than 230 million people in the crosshairs of temperatures above 90F, while millions will experience triple-digit temperatures during the Fourth of July holiday week and into weekend festivities.

The Midwest will be the epicenter of the heat dome early in the week, with metro areas such as St. Louis and Detroit climbing into the mid- to upper 90s.

By Wednesday, the heat shifts eastward, threatening record highs across Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, where temperatures are expected to exceed 100F over multiple days.

Heat wave is inbound, and this one could be among the DC area's most intense.

As we close in on the Wednesday start of an unusually intense and long-lasting blast of extreme heat extending into the Fourth of July weekend, computer models continue to pump out numbers that could… pic.twitter.com/CctcKMJMri

— Capital Weather (@capitalweather) June 29, 2026

Meteorologist Ryan Maue described it as a "mega heat dome" that will produce "record highs (daily) for almost the entire Eastern Seaboard from Maine to South Carolina."

"Fire up the grill, buy plenty of ice 🧊 for your favorite beverages, get your pool floaties in order, and prepare for an extremely hot and humid Independence Day weekend across the Eastern United States with temperatures well over 100°F," Maue wrote in the note.

Bloomberg's two-week forecast for average temperatures across the Washington, D.C., metro area indicates the heat dome will linger until nearly the midpoint of the month. Temperatures are forecast to return to the 30-year mean of around 78F.

This is not global warming - just entering peak summer in North America.

To note, there are mounting El Niño risks (read here & here).

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 15:00

On a new episode of Straight Outta Flushing, presented by your local Ford dealers, Dexter Henry and Tyler Ward discuss their ideal candidates for the Mets’ open manager role. Full episode: https://youtu.be/4ABNSnyqJiI

On a new episode of Straight Outta Flushing, presented by your local Ford dealers, Dexter Henry and Tyler Ward share their thoughts on the Mets’ clubhouse culture. Full episode: https://youtu.be/4ABNSnyqJiI

On this episode of Straight Outta Flushing, Dexter Henry and Tyler Ward react to David Stearns’ latest press conference and what it revealed about the direction of the franchise. Did Stearns take enough accountability for another disappointing Mets season, or did his answers raise even more questions about the front office’s plan? The guys also...

Does Kelsey Swanson' ex-boyfriend have a superstar ex?

Former child star Daveigh Chase — best known for voicing Lilo in "Lilo & Stitch" — died in a Los Angeles hospital after a heartbreaking battle with drug addiction and homelessness.

Two days later, Thai police said they found the teenager's naked corpse, stuffed inside a suitcase and dumped in waist-high grass, near a railway track, a short distance away from the beachfront.

“Virtual Reali-Tea” co-hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real are recapping “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” season 17, episode 13. The ladies are in Scotland on a cast trip and the drama just keeps coming. Angela Oakley makes a major claim about Shamea Morton and their feud heats up. Check out the full recap now! “Real...

“Virtual Reali-Tea” co-hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real are recapping “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” season 17, episode 13. The ladies are in Scotland on a cast trip and the drama just keeps coming. Angela Oakley makes a major claim about Shamea Morton and their feud heats up. Check out the full recap now! “Real...

Out east is going all out.

The family of Lance Corporal Armando Ortiz Canseco held a vigil for him Sunday in Richfield.

The heartbroken father of a 15-year-old left “brain dead” after taking part in a dangerous social media “challenge” has revealed his teenage daughter has now died from her injuries.

Oil Markets Are Pricing A Supply Surge That Isn't Guaranteed

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

• Oil prices are tumbling as tankers stream out of the Strait of Hormuz, but most of that traffic is stranded vessels finally allowed to leave, not new supply heading in.

• Iran struck a commercial ship near Oman this week even as the 60-day U.S.-Iran ceasefire holds and markets keep pricing in a supply glut.

• The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve is at its lowest level in four decades, and China may resume buying once it stops selling off the cargoes it's offloading now.

Crude oil prices are in freefall after the United States and Iran agreed on a ceasefire, set to last 60 days. Traders expect the ceasefire to unleash an avalanche of crude, and indeed, tankers are leaving the Persian Gulf in growing numbers. And yet Iran just struck a commercial ship in Hormuz.

Bloomberg reported earlier this week that the ceasefire prompted huge discounts in available crude cargoes, noting how Angolan crude was selling at a $10 discount to dated Brent—for the first time in a decade. Not only this, but Chinese refiners were offering crude oil cargoes for sale, the publication wrote, citing unnamed traders.

“You actually get a discount to buy a barrel now versus a barrel tomorrow because of the weakness in the Asian pull on Middle Eastern grades,” Daan Struyven, co-head of global commodities at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg.

“Reopening is going well and quickly.”

This appears to be the general feeling in trading and analyst circles. Indeed, analysts were somewhat baffled by the speed with which oil prices dropped amid the reports of more tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz loaded.

“The market has rebalanced through a meaningfully different mix of demand losses and inventory withdrawals than we initially assumed,” JP Morgan commodity analysts said, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. 

ING, however, sounded a note of caution.

“The market is largely focused on the resumption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, which continues to increase,” the Dutch bank’s commodity team wrote today.

“However, much of the increase reflects previously stranded vessels leaving the Persian Gulf. Vessel flows into the Gulf remain much more modest.”

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal also noted in its report that while there has been a strong rebound in tanker traffic out of Hormuz, it is made up of stranded vessels finally allowed to exit the chokepoint. Incoming tankers, however, are nowhere near outgoing numbers. The publication cited the chief executive of Phillips 66 as estimating some 90 to 100 million barrels set to leave the strait and adding, “Then the question is: Who will be brave enough to send ships back in? Will they be able to get insurance? How does that all play out?”

Interestingly, Bloomberg also focused on the stranded tankers now leaving the Strait of Hormuz as the basis for its prediction that a flood of crude is coming into the market. The suggestion here is that oil markets are about to flip from deficit to excess in a matter of days, which was immediately reflected in prices. “The market might be a little bit overenthusiastic of how quickly the supply side, particularly inventories, are going to stabilize,” TD Securities’ global head of commodity strategy Bart Melek told the Wall Street Journal.

The reported Iranian strike on a commercial vessel in Hormuz earlier this week could give those overenthusiastic market players a pause, but for now, there is nothing to suggest it. Oil benchmarks are set for a sharp weekly decline despite a slowdown in the price movement following the news.

“With the geopolitical risk premium once again creeping back into prices, markets will be watching intently to see if tanker traffic resumes or if these latest hurdles force producers to tap the brakes on planned production increases,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore said as quoted by Reuters.

There is also the matter of inventory refilling. As Bloomberg noted in its report, echoing analyst warnings, the world handled the Hormuz crisis by tapping oil in storage. China’s contribution to relative market balance was seen as particularly notable, since the world’s largest importer of crude could afford to reduce purchases by dipping into its massive oil inventory, reducing oil prices’ potential for skyrocketing. Yet with flows out of the Persian Gulf improving, Chinese refiners may start buying once again—presumably, after they sell all the cargoes they want to sell right now.

The U.S. also needs to refill, and rather urgently, because oil in storage is at levels low enough to start worrying some observers, with the strategic petroleum reserve sitting at the lowest level in four decades, lower than when it was in 2023, after the Biden administration released close to 200 million barrels. At the end of the week ending June 19, the SPR had 331.2 million barrels in it. The thing to remember about oil in storage, whether in the U.S. or anywhere else, is that not all of these barrels are actually available. There is a certain level of crude in the system that needs to be maintained in order for the system to keep working—the so-called minimum operational level.

So, it appears that a lot more oil is coming out of the Persian Gulf, and this is, naturally, weighing on prices. Yet there are doubts as to whether the rate of this outflow can be sustained over a longer period once the stranded ships clear out, which is potentially a booster for prices. The issue of insurance also looms large over the tanker market, as does the strength of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 14:40

Meta Restricts Engineers' Use of Claude Code And Codex Over Model 'Distillation' Concerns

Meta Platforms has instructed engineers in its Applied AI division to limit or restrict their use of Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex coding and agent tools, according to internal documents reviewed by The Information. The policy, driven by concerns over inadvertent model distillation, aims to prevent outputs from rival AI systems from contaminating Meta's own training data and model development processes for its Llama family of models (which, quite frankly, could only help).

The move reflects the increasingly zero-sum nature of frontier AI development, where companies aggressively protect the provenance and purity of their training data while seeking to reduce reliance on competitor tools. Internal guidelines referencing the restrictions date back to at least May, with the policy actively in effect as of late June. Meta has not publicly confirmed or commented on the directive.

According to the internal documents, strict limits have been placed on how engineers in the applied AI division can use the rival tools. The stated goal is to block "inadvertent distillation" of competitor model outputs into Meta's AI development pipeline. The scope is targeted: it focuses on engineers working directly on model building and applied AI initiatives rather than the entire engineering organization.

Claude Code from Anthropic and Codex from OpenAI are basically the industry standard now for professional developers engaged in agentic coding workflows. These desktop and app-based interfaces can plan, write, debug, and iterate on complex codebases, offering powerful assistance at relatively low individual subscription costs. That accessibility, however, has increased the potential surface area for the risks Meta is now seeking to contain.

What "Distillation" Means

Model distillation is a well-established technique in which outputs from a larger or more capable "teacher" model are used to train or improve a "student" model. In this instance, Meta is concerned that high-quality code suggestions, architectural recommendations, debugging logic, and reasoning traces generated by Claude or Codex could be incorporated - whether intentionally for productivity or accidentally through copied artifacts - into internal codebases, documentation, or synthetic training data.

The result would be a subtle transfer of competitor capabilities into Llama models. Beyond intellectual property exposure, the risk includes contamination of Meta's carefully curated training data pipelines and the creation of unintended dependencies on rival model behaviors. Secondary concerns involve proprietary Meta code and context being transmitted to external Anthropic and OpenAI servers during routine usage.

The move comes as Meta is locked in a high-stakes competition to close the capability gap with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google - while simultaneously constructing massive internal infrastructure. The company has publicly emphasized its desire to reduce dependence on third-party AI services for both cost and strategic autonomy reasons. Restricting these widely used coding tools sends a clear internal message: engineers should build with Meta tools and data wherever possible.

TestContributor Mon, 06/29/2026 - 14:20