The 2026 World Cup’s group stage is officially in the books (how much have you been watching?!) And now the field has been whittled down from 48 countries to 32 championship contenders. Now comes the knockout stage, where the tournament’s intensity will be ratcheted up a notch, as all but one remaining match will be a win-or-go-home contest for its participants.

The single-elimination nature of the knockout stage won't be the only significant difference between it and the group stage. There will also be procedures in place to ensure no matches ends in a draw which could set up for some dramatic, extra time finishes or last-minute penalty shootouts.

How exactly does the knockout stage work? The remaining teams have been placed into a bracket, and the field will halve itself during each ensuing round of the tournament until a winner is crowned. Can you feel the pressure building?

So, which teams are the ones everyone is watching? Well, France remains everyone's favorite to win. They are who the majority of betters are putting their money on, according to the latest odds from BetMGM. And The Athletic says the team’s been “simply too good to ignore.”

However, there’s lots of buzz about Colombia’s passionate and talented team. And sports writer Jay Harris says Japan has been mesmerizing. "They finished second and were unbeaten in a challenging group which contained the Netherlands, Sweden and Tunisia. And Daizen Maeda’s goal against Sweden was pure poetry."

The U.S. and Iran exchanged blows over the weekend in the Persian Gulf, extending fighting around the Strait of Hormuz into a third day and testing a fragile ceasefire meant to end months of hostilities. American operations targeted Iranian communication and air-defense sites, drone-storage facilities and minelaying capabilities, the U.S. military said, following what it said was an attack on an oil tanker in the strait.

Tehran retaliated yesterday with drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran, and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. President Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the U.S. would “militarily finish the job”.

But, in somewhat promising news, both countries agreed to stop attacking each other, as the two sides plan to meet Tuesday in Qatar’s capital to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials tell Axios both sides will stand down “for now” and that “vessels can move freely” as technical talks are set to continue. The talks were originally set to happen in Switzerland to address Iran's nuclear program, but the escalation moved them to a different venue and refocused them on the Strait.

The California governor primary is live right now. So is the Texas Senate race, the 2028 presidential field, and the question of whether Taylor Swift releases a song for Toy Story 5.

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Behold: The Waymo of space rovers. NASA engineers say today’s current rovers could go so much longer and faster, if they could only think more for themselves. So that’s what they’re working on.

And a miniature prototype is helping prove their point. On a recent test, ERNEST, short for Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, rolled toward a pile of boulders that would stop NASA’s current Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in their tracks. Instead of stalling or waiting for new instructions from controllers, it sized up the rocks, shifted its stance, and climbed straight over—no joystick from 200 million miles away necessary.

According to Mashable, the small robot “looks a little like Wall-E or Johnny 5, with four mesh wheels in place of treads.” Those wheels can lift and tilt, as if rising on tiptoes. ERNEST has already shown it can trundle about 16 miles across the Colorado desert in California. Engineers were hands-off during the excursion, mostly there to see how far the rover’s new brain and body could take it. So far, so good.