Gareth Edwards has exited the Jurassic World Rebirth sequel as its director, citing “creative differences” as the reason for his departure from the project.
Sources informed The Hollywood Reporter of his exit, with Universal Studios providing a succinct statement on the matter. “We had an incredible experience working with Gareth on Jurassic World Rebirth,” they told the outlet.
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While it’s as-yet unclear who will direct the project now, this bump in the road isn’t the end for Rebirth’s sequel. A script has already been penned by David Koepp, who famously wrote the script for the original Jurassic Park film in 1993 and 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Rebirth’s stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey are also expected to return, though nothing has been confirmed as of yet, since schedules are reportedly still being worked out. The film famously made Johansson the highest-grossing lead actor ever, launching her over Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson.
It was a hugely profitable flick, grossing over $750 million at the box office, in part due to its massive opening weekend, where it raked up $300 million globally. While the numbers speak for themselves, critics’ opinions were decidedly less positive, with IGN’s Clint Gage rating Rebirth a 5 out of 10, arguing the film “plays it frustratingly safe, falling back on the blueprint of the original film, but not shedding any of the problems with the more recent movies.”
Rebirth was a fairly stand-alone experience, though its ending certainly pointed to a continuation of its story, which took place in the aftermath of the events of Jurassic World Dominion. For now, Universal seems to be moving full-speed ahead as fans await more details.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.%!s()
Claire's has new uniforms as part of its transformation.
Courtesy of Claire's
Claires has reimagined its core piercing business, transforming its classic service to reflect modern girls, with everything from upgraded training for associates to elevated in-store experiences and a fresh look with a lilith (lavender) color scheme across all stores in the U.S. and Canada.
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“It’s a unique white space,” said Jillian Cueff, Chief Merchandising Officer of Claire’s, who joined the company in January. “There’s no other place to get your ears pierced in the mall. We pierce all of America and Canada, too. It’s our bullseye.”
However, the retail piercing industry has grown more competitive in recent years, with companies such as Rowan and Studs also offering the service. Yet, no one caters to Gen Alpha girls the way Claire’s does with its target age of 10.
“One of the things we want our brand to represent is a playground for girlhood,” said Cueff. “We’re creating a destination for her in the mall. That’s where we started. Piercing is what we’re known for.”
The company has been piercing girls and their mothers for nearly five decades with 131 million ears pierced to date. Cueff said the price remains the same as when Claire’s started. “We’ve elevated the experience, to a clinical level,” she said. “Before, we felt like it was less of an environment girls wanted to be in.”
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Claire’s worked with industry experts on ongoing education and re-certification across stores, enhanced clinical training, FDA‑registered medical devices, and elevated safety protocols. The brand introduced professional instructors who travel across the country to train and support Claire’s store associates. The instructors are called the Piercing Excellence Team.
Styles including single studs and a selection with lab-grown diamonds are new to the retailer, which offers free piercing and aftercare with the purchase of an ear piercing kit starting at $29.99.
A consumer at the Santa Anita, California Claire's store getting her ears pierced.
Courtesy of Claire's
A curved purple piercing station welcomes girls with newly added earring bars. “We know this customer loves to explore and touch and feel before they get the piercing done,” Cueff said. “For some our more cautious consumers we have squishies to hold.
“We made a dedicated place for piercing in the store and added selfie mirrors,” she said. “We know she likes to share everything with all of her friends.”
Claire’s consumers love toys, candy and viral products, Cueff said, adding, “We have some third party brands that are in the toy space. It complements that moment with all the things the Gen Alpha girl wants. It’s organized with a little bit more inspiration and surprise.”
Claire’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2018. An initial public offering was planned in 2021, but those plans were scuttled in 2023. Last August it closed more that 290 stores, including 234 Claire’s locations and 56 Icing stores as part of a second bankruptcy. There was the subsequent sale of the company for $140 million to private equity firm Ames Watson.
The most recent bankruptcy wasn’t due to declining profits – the retailer said it had doubled profits – but rather a perfect storm of debt, operational decline and structural weakness that made the business untenable.
“I consider myself part of the leadership team and we’re focused on driving revenue and profit,” Cueff said. “This year’s focus is giving our customer that surprise and delight experience every time she comes in. We’re all focused on making sure the customer is at the center of our decisions. We’re excited to create for her.”
The first iteration of the new store elements bowed at a location in Santa Anita, California today.
The piercing station in Claire's new color, lilith or lavendar.
Courtesy of Claire's
This summer, the store is a playground geared to Claire’s 10-year-old target customer, a Gen Alpha fan girl. “We have some exciting marketing campaigns that are launching for fall,” Cueff said. “We speak to consumers and have many focus groups. We listen day in and day out to actual customers.”
Claire’s is also focused on increasing style, quality and value. “This customer can make up her mind very quickly,” said Cueff. “We’re making sure we’re delivering on time when she wants it. We’re elevating the trend worthiness across the total store and about 9,000 skus. That’s down from where we’ve been in the past when the store was more disjointed and bazaar-like.”
Cueff is concentrating on Claire’s own stores. “We always have aspirations for opening more stores, but making sure the ones we have are rocking and rolling, is our top priority right now,” she said of the 900-store fleet. %!s()
Agriculture covers more than 40% of Earth's habitable land and plays a central role in both climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet the impact of agriculture is far from evenly distributed across space.
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In a new study published in Nature Food, Baoxiao Liu and her colleagues from Leiden's Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) mapped where agriculture causes the greatest damage worldwide.
Maps show where agriculture causes the greatest damage
Liu and her colleagues combined data on agricultural land, biodiversity and carbon storage with information on different food products. This allowed them to create global maps showing where agriculture places the greatest pressure on climate and nature.
The maps reveal that the impact is highly concentrated: Around two-thirds of biodiversity loss and the loss of natural carbon storage occur on just one-third of agricultural land.
The largest hotspots are found in Mexico and Central America, parts of Brazil, West Africa, India, China and Southeast Asia. "These are mainly regions where agriculture is either very intensive or takes place in ecosystems that naturally store large amounts of carbon and are rich in biodiversity, such as tropical forests," Liu explains. "When these areas are converted into farmland, both values are lost at the same time."
Cattle farming causes the most damage
The researchers not only mapped where the damage occurs but also which food products contribute most to these impacts. Products from cattle farming, such as beef and milk, are among the largest contributors to environmental damage worldwide.
Together, beef and milk account for 41% of biodiversity loss and 29% of the loss of carbon storage caused by food production. "Animal-based products, and especially products from cattle, have a disproportionately large impact," Liu says. "Cattle require large amounts of agricultural land, both for grazing and for growing feed crops."
Targeted measures can deliver major benefits
Previous studies often examined either carbon loss or biodiversity loss, usually at a much coarser spatial scale. This study is the first to map both types of environmental loss simultaneously at a global scale, with detailed resolution and linked to different food products.
"If we target a relatively small share of agricultural land, this can already deliver major benefits for climate and nature," Liu says. Because the greatest losses are concentrated in specific areas and products, targeted measures can have a substantial impact. These could include improving agricultural practices, protecting vulnerable areas and changing food consumption patterns so that less land is needed for food production, allowing areas to recover as natural ecosystems where possible.
"The losses we see also represent potential gains," Liu says. "Agriculture can therefore not only be part of the problem but also offer major opportunities to address both crises."
Publication details
Baoxiao Liu et al, High-resolution carbon and biodiversity mapping shows correlated losses across space and agricultural products, Nature Food (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-026-01387-0
Swati Mestri holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering and has worked as a content editor since 2019. She has experience editing research documents across technology, health care, and materials science, and has a particular interest in technology and space.
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Citation:
One-third of agricultural land accounts for two-thirds of global impact, study reveals (2026, August 6)
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The Automakers and Tech Companies Pushing Autonomous Driving Forward
The Role of AI in Autonomous Driving
The Future of Self-Driving Cars
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A close up of a woman in an autonomous car and holding a cup. A self driving car is broadly defined as having technology that senses the conditions around it and can self-adjust.
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getty
An autonomous vehicle is broadly defined as one equipped with technology that senses the conditions around it, including traffic, pedestrians and physical hazards and can adjust its course and speed without a human at the controls. The terms “autonomous” and “self driving cars” are often used interchangeably.
However, as defined by the SAE, formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers (now SAE International), there are six levels of automated driving ranging from full control of a vehicle by a physical driver, assisted by advanced safety technology, to a vehicle that can operate without any on-board human input. Only that top level represents a driverless, or fully autonomous vehicle.
What Is An Autonomous Vehicle?
An autonomous vehicle is defined by the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems as one that uses “technology to partially or entirely replace the human driver in navigating a vehicle from an origin to a destination while avoiding road hazards and responding to traffic conditions.”
The SAE’s six levels of what it terms “automated” driving ranges from the first three levels (which start with zero), where a driver is behind the wheel and in control, but is aided by various automated warnings or safety features such as blind spot warning and automatic emergency braking.
Levels 3 and 4 represent technology in which the vehicle is self-driving under certain circumstances but may require a human driver to take over.
Finally, level 5 is a fully autonomous, or self-driving, vehicle that does not require a human to operate the controls. This is the only level at which a vehicle is considered fully autonomous.
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SAE chart showing six levels of automated driving.
SAE International
How Do Self-Driving Cars Work?
Self-driving cars see what’s going on around them using three main electronic “eyes”—radar, cameras and laser-based LiDar, which stands for light detection and ranging, along with artificial intelligence. They all feed data into on-board processors, using sophisticated software, algorithms and machine learning to send signals to the vehicle’s actuators to trigger appropriate actions such as braking, steering and acceleration.
The array of sensors can detect a wide variety of road features and obstacles such as lane markings, curbs, pedestrians, cyclists or other vehicles. This is done either visually, through cameras, or by bouncing light impulses or radar signals off of surrounding objects. While self-driving automation technologies help improve safety, they are not 100% infallible, and their effectiveness can be diminished when sensors or lane markings are covered by snow or other heavy precipitation.
The Pros and Cons of Driverless Cars
Self-driving vehicles where there is either what’s known as a “safety driver” on board or no driver at all are currently in use, mainly by fleets that include warehouse yard trucks that transport goods from one contained location to another. Companies such as Kodiak Robotics and Aurora now operate self-driving trucks with no safety driver aboard, but may have engineers riding to monitor vehicle performance.
Commercial delivery company Gatik also operates autonomous trucks to bring stock from warehouses to points of sale.
Cab of Kodiak Robotics sixth-generation driverless ready autonomous semi-truck.
Kodiak Robotics Inc.
While Kodiak, Aurora and Gatik run their trucks with no human on board, taxi services such as Waymo and the now-defunct Cruise are examples of when self-driving technology goes awry. Cruise, a former subsidiary of General Motors Co., was forced to shut down its robotaxi service after one of its cars was involved in an accident that injured a pedestrian. In 2018, a driverless Uber robotaxi with a safety driver aboard struck and killed a bicyclist in Tempe, Arizona.
Advantages of Self-Driving Cars
Self-driving cars offer a number of advantages over vehicles requiring hands-on drivers including convenience, access to mobility, efficiency, cost-savings and traffic congestion.
For those incapable of driving due to age or disabilities or without access to conventional methods of public transportation, self-driving taxis and other transit vehicles are seen as a way to provide mobility to get to errands, work or medical appointments. Commercial operators see self-driving vehicles as boosting cost-savings and efficiency because they can run for longer hours without having to stop for meals or breaks, and they require fewer employees.
Cars and trucks with self-driving safety technology called automated driver assistance systems, or ADAS, are already reducing traffic congestion and accidents. A report by the National High Traffic Safety Administration notes ADAS helps reduce traffic accidents because they “assist a driver by anticipating imminent dangers and working to avoid them.”
The combination of reducing traffic jams due to accidents and potentially decreasing the number of vehicles on the road when self-driving transit becomes more prevalent provides promising environmental benefits. A University of Michigan study concluded that when “savings from the driving efficiencies associated with self-driving vehicles are factored into the equation, the net result is a reduction in lifetime energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions of up to 9% compared to the conventional vehicles.”
Challenges of Self-Driving Cars
The notion of widely available fully autonomous cars relieving travelers from any of the duties and stresses of driving remains fraught with challenges that range from cost to safety concerns. No matter how well any of the technology works, none of it so far emulates human thought, logic or instincts to make split second decisions.
However, taking the human element out of the equation also eliminates distractions or emotions from affecting the vehicle’s operation. For that reason, fully self-driving cars are viewed as potentially safer since the technology is designed to operate the vehicle safely and logically by detecting and reacting to traffic conditions and the route it’s programmed to follow.
That brings up a question of ethics. Since self-driving cars are basically robots programmed to react a certain way in a given situation, they cannot make an ethical decision, for instance, to avoid a collision. Should the car take action to prevent it from striking a person or a group of people? Germany passed a law prioritizing saving human lives over animals.
Serious accidents such as those in California and Arizona have contributed to fear and concern on the part of many communities that would just as soon not have driverless vehicles plying their streets.
Other challenges to wider adoption of self-driving cars include weather, where sensors and road markings could be obscured by snow, sleet or a hard rain. Overall cost remains a major obstacle to private ownership of fully automated vehicles as well. A 2023 study by McKinsey and Company predicts “By 2030, 12% of new passenger cars are sold with L3+ autonomous technologies and 37 percent have advanced AD technologies in 2035.”
The Automakers and Tech Companies Pushing Autonomous Driving Forward
GM's Super Cruise system can temporarily take over driving on certain roads and during certain conditions. The service is offered on a subscription basis.
Frenak/Cadillac
Right now the highest level of automation available to consumers are systems such as GM’s Super Cruise, Ford Motor Co.’s BlueCruise, BMW’s Motorway Assistant and Tesla’s Full Self Driving—all Level 2. With those systems a driver can temporarily engage the systems to operate the car under certain conditions.
There are several companies building or operating self-driving vehicles for commercial deliveries and robo transit services.
Waymo operates robotaxi service in several U.S. markets.
Getty Images
One of the most successful is Waymo. It operates robotaxi service in 11 markets around the U.S. with plans to expand to 21 more cities including London, UK and Tokyo, Japan.
Partnering with Amazon, Zoox operates robotaxi service in Las Vegas and San Francisco with plans to expand to Miami, Florida and Austin, Texas.
Michigan-based May Mobility operates its self-driving Toyota Sienna minivans with no backup driver aboard in 15 locations in the U.S. and Japan.
Gatik operates autonomous trucks that deliver goods from distribution points to retail locations, while Kodiak Robotics adds its autonomous technology to semi-trucks running long-haul and local routes for such companies as Kroger and Ikea. Swedish tech company Einride’s autonomous electric pods deliver goods in Europe and North America. Pods are driven by remote operators and have no cabs for human drivers.
The Role of AI in Autonomous Driving
Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in making self-driving vehicles “smarter” and safer.
Through deep learning and computer vision, AI enables cars to better understand their environment and predict the behavior of other road users, according to automotive supplier Valeo, which declared AI “a key driver of mobility transformation.”
Indeed, generative AI has “significantly accelerated the progress of ADAS and AD technologies,” according to a report published June 9 by McKinsey and Co.
The Future of Self-Driving Cars
Consumer appetite for leaving the driving to technology is growing and they’re willing to pay for it, leading automakers to boost ADAS and other automation offerings, perhaps paving the way for fully self-driving cars and trucks to one day be available and affordable for individuals.
Based on consumer interest in automated driving features and commercial solutions available on the market today, in its report, McKinsey predicted ADAS and AD could generate between $300 billion and $400 billion in the passenger car market by 2035.
The world will likely be affected in five key ways, according to artificial intelligence company Allerin: fewer traffic accidents, reduced car ownership, automated logistics including deliveries, improved livability due less noise and air pollution from fewer vehicles on the road and no parking or traffic tickets since autonomous vehicles can pick up and drop off passengers then go on their way.
It’s not certain if all cars will eventually operate without a human behind the wheel and at least partially in control. According to McKinsey, any transition will be at a snail’s pace, projecting that in 2030, only 4% of new passenger cars sold will be installed with level 3 or higher automation functions, increasing to just 17% in 2035.
Don’t discard your favorite driving cap yet. While automakers are rapidly offering more sophisticated automated driver assist technologies, full, self-driving vehicles are likely to remain primarily in the realm of fleets and commercial operators for the foreseeable future. %!s()
Let’s cut to the chase: Starting today, you can take an additional $100 off of our current $300 discount for your founder, investor, or attendee TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, which is a nice bonus on top of our current discounted pricing.
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This flash sale will run for just one more full day, until tomorrow, August 7 at 11:59 p.m. PT. This discount will mark your last chance at a bonus deal before our next pricing tier kicks in on August 21.
Register with this link to lock in your extra $100 off.
If you need to learn more before locking in your plans, Disrupt takes over Moscone West from October 13–15, bringing more than 10,000 founders, VCs, tech industry innovators, and builders for three days built around one thing: creating momentum for future success.
This isn’t a passive conference you simply watch — it’s a curated itinerary of speakers, workshops, network opportunities and post-event excitement for those actively building, investing, and looking for what’s next.
The Disrupt Stage: The conversations everyone will be talking about
The Disrupt Stage is our flagship programming, and we just revealed the initial lineup. We’ll dig into the biggest shifts in tech right now, whether it’s a post-smartphone future with Amazon’s SVP of Devices and Services Panos Panay; the real implications of a world in which everyone can develop their own software, with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad; and much, much more.
But that’s just one stage. Disrupt 2026 also features the:
AI Stage, covering the security gaps and business model shifts AI is forcing on every SaaS company.
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Beyond the stages
Most Disrupt passes also unlock Startup Battlefield, where 200 startups will compete live for the Battlefield Cup. You’ll also get access to networking opportunities driven by your needs as a founder, investor, or learner, plus our Expo Hall, where hundreds of startups showcase their work.
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After 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday, August 7, this extra $100 savings goes away. Regular discounted pricing ends on August 21. If Disrupt is on your radar for this year, this is the best deal you’ll get between now and the event.
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