Penalty kicks are already proving critical to big wins at this year’s World Cup. But the advantage in penalty kicks has more to do with psychological effects than who kicks first.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: NASA provided an Artemis update today (June 30), announcing new lunar landing contracts for its Moon Base initiative and a surprise new possible rover mission that could be headed to the moon's south pole. During the second monthly update that NASA has provided for its moon base plans, the agency named Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines as the providers of four robotic landers that will deliver scientific payloads to the surface of the moon, as NASA tests and expands the technologies needed for a permanent human outpost. "This is this drawing on the playbook that worked very well for NASA during the 1960s," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during the livestreamed update, explaining the experiential approach to a crewed lunar return. "We didn't just jump right to Apollo 11." Isaacman also announced the potential repurposing of an engineering development model built to mirror the agency's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars. "There is another," Isaacman said, quoting Yoda's line from "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back." That test rover is called PROMISE, short for "Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration" (though it was formerly known as Optimism). PROMISE was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, where it has been used as a test platform for fixes or commands that engineers want to try on the ground before permanently sending them to Perseverance and Curiosity. Now, NASA wants to send PROMISE on a mission of its own. Though sending PROMISE to the moon would leave Perseverance and Curiosity -- both of which remain active on Mars -- without an Earth-based testbed, Isaacman thinks it would be worth it. "We've had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we've got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in," he said. "So the question was posed: 'What if we send it to the moon?'" With a little refurbishment, PROMISE would help advance NASA's lunar plans, Isaacman added. Like Perseverance and Curiosity, the test rover is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which converts heat from naturally decaying radioactive material into electricity. So it wouldn't require sunlight to operate -- a real benefit on the moon, where most locations experience long stretches of darkness. (NASA plans to build its Artemis base near the moon's south pole, which is thought to harbor an abundance of water ice and also has a relatively complex lighting environment.) The other robots currently in the works to launch on future missions to the moon, including the landers announced during today's update, are all solar powered. Through 2029, NASA hopes to launch up to 20 such missions as part of the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative to support the first phase of the agency's moon base plans, and the landers announced today will be some of the first in that lineup.

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Advocates describe this moment as both a crisis and an opening to reimagine the promises of freedom and democracy

This Fourth of July marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence promised liberty and equality for all – even as it excluded most of the people living on the land it claimed to liberate.

For many Americans, the semiquincentennial is less a celebration than a reckoning. The country arrives at this milestone amid sustained attacks on voting rights, civil rights and democratic institutions – challenges that organizers say are taking the country back generations. It’s a moment that activists and advocates describe as both a crisis and an opening to reimagine the promises of freedom and democracy.

Potus pocketed over $2.2bn last year – but with an algae-filled reflecting pool and his State Fair a fiasco, what price happiness?

From certain angles, it might appear as if President Trump is having a tough month. He messed up the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, which he blamed on acts of vandalism no one has been able to stand up. The supreme court rejected both his bid to appeal against the $5m (£3.8m) civil judgment against him for defaming and sexually abusing E Jean Carroll, and his executive order to end birthright citizenship. And the war with Iran keeps rumbling on. And yet, after Trump’s mandatory financial disclosure report was released on Tuesday, headlines drew attention to the fact the president made more than $2.2bn in revenue in 2025 – more than three times what he pulled in the year before his inauguration. Contrary to appearances, perhaps everything is going exactly to plan.

It is always a question with Trump as to how much the wealth he has accrued in his second term in office is the spoils of strategy rather than the lucky result of his scattergun but industrial-scale hustle. Looking at the numbers in his financial report, one is reminded that before he became president, Trump piloted a series of failed businesses – six of which declared bankruptcy – and gave every indication of being a lousy businessman. It’s often pointed out that if Trump had simply invested the vast inheritance left to him by Fred Trump, his father, in a standard tracker fund, he would’ve made more money than through his lacklustre business career, and there’s nothing to suggest this was likely to change.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist