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Lada adds a six-speed manual option to the lineup of the Iskra SW. The manual replaces the CVT for better performance under heavy loads. It s combined with the more potent 1.6-liter engine producing 105 hp. Cheap cars with manual transmissions are turning into endangered species across most of the world, but Russia just got a fresh proposal aimed at family buyers. The Lada Iskra SW picks up a new trim that pairs a six-speed manual with the strongest engine in the range and a set of black steel wheels. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("0f7e3106-c4d6-4db4-8135-c508879a76f8"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("82503191-e1d1-435a-874f-9c78a2a54a2f"); } }); Lada revealed the Iskra back in mid-2024, though the cars didn t reach buyers until mid-2025. It rides on a localized take on the Dacia-derived CMF-B architecture that dates to the Renault Group era, and it comes in sedan, SW, and SW Cross forms. The lineup now stretches further with a configuration built to handle rough roads with a full load aboard. More: Lada s 49-Year-Old Niva Just Got Its First Airbag And A Rust-Proof Body While entry-level variants of the Iskra run a naturally-aspirated 1.6-liter engine producing 89 hp (66 kW / 90 PS), the Iskra SW Drive gets the more potent version with 105 hp (78 kW / 106 PS). The real news sits one row down the spec sheet, as the CVT is gone, replaced by a six-speed manual. That pairing already existed in the sedan, but dropping it into the wagon hands buyers a more useful body to go with it. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform === "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("ea4d4b5a-f8e5-4d5d-9d9a-53a3b956b6cd"); } else{ adpushup.triggerAd("44c0a4dc-e25b-4ba5-ac64-2c510461b92a"); } }); Lada The manual does more than wake up the driving, it also outruns the CVT. The SW reaches 100 km/h (62 mph) from rest in 12.7 seconds and carries on to a top speed of 174 km/h (108 mph), which makes it 1.2 seconds quicker and 8 km/h (5 mph) faster than its automatic counterpart. Lada quotes fuel consumption of 7.8 lt/100km (30.1 mpg) for the three-pedal car. More: Lada s Long-Frozen Next-Gen Niva May Have Just Slipped Into Public View Built with simplicity in mind, the Lada Iskra SW Drive rides on a set of 15-inch steel wheels finished in black, although it retains the chrome inserts on the grille rather than going full-poverty spec with unpainted bumpers. Despite the cost-cutting measures on the outside, the kit remains relatively generous for a budget model. Standard features include the 8-inch Lada Enjoy Evo infotainment, heated front seats, heated mirrors, A/C, cruise control, and dual airbags. Lada Pricing for the new Iskra SW Drive opens at 1,565,000 rubles, roughly $19,800 at today s exchange rate, which undercuts the CVT version and its 1,677,000-ruble ($21,200) ask. It also lands just $500 above the Iskra SW fitted with the 89 hp engine and the five-speed manual. The cheapest Iskra of all remains the entry sedan, which starts at 1,277,000 rubles ($16,100). More: Lada s Budget SUV That Was Once A Chevy Time Travels To 2025 With A Facelift var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("bb7964e9-07de-4b06-a83e-ead35079d53c"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("9b1169d9-7a89-4971-a77f-1397f7588751"); } }); While the Iskra lineup doesn t include a performance-focused model, Lada recently showcased the Iskra Cup by TMS Motorsport. The track-only racecar was designed for a single-make series and features a custom bodykit, a lowered suspension, white alloy wheels, and a roll cage. This one is powered by a turbocharged 1.6-liter engine with 215 hp (160 kW / 218 PS) mated to a six-speed sequential gearbox. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("bb7964e9-07de-4b06-a83e-ead35079d53c"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("9b1169d9-7a89-4971-a77f-1397f7588751"); } }); Lada Iskra Cup by TMS Motorsport

SpaceX launched 24 more of its Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Sunday (June 28), continuing to expand its broadband internet relay network.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the new batch (Group 17-40) launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff took place at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT or 9:09 a.m. PDT local time).The Starlink satellites reached orbit about 9 minutes after leaving the ground and were on track to be deployed by the Falcon 9 upper stage about an hour later.The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen after landing on its four legs atop the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Sunday, June 28, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)Previous Booster B1088 missionsNROL-126 | Transporter-12 | SPHEREx | NROL-57 | 12 Starlink missionsThe rocket's first stage (Booster 1088) completed its 17th flight, touching down on the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean.The 24 satellites increased the total number of active relays in the Starlink network to more than 10,700, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The Starlink service provides access to the internet to people around the world, as well to in-flight wifi and cell-to-satellite service providers.Sunday's launch was SpaceX's 75th Falcon 9 mission in 2026.

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they've stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, 69% of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.Globally, 40% report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It's the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.Wired for bad newsLong before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.A predator nearby mattered more than a beautiful sunset. The cost of missing a real threat was death, while the cost of overreacting was a few minutes of wasted vigilance. The asymmetry made this bias adaptive.Here is the problem: the human brain has not changed since then. We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What's changed is the size of the world it's asked to scan for threats.News fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It is the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate. (Image credit: pzAxe via Getty Images)Scanning the whole worldFor most of human history, the threats our nervous system processed were local. A neighbouring tribe. A drought. The illness of a child we personally knew. Information about distant places would barely arrive, and if it did, it was mainly irrelevant.In 2026, the same neurological system is being asked to absorb a war in one region, a financial shock in another, a climate disaster in a third and a violent crime in a fourth, all before lunchtime.A study published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour examined more than 105,000 real news headlines viewed nearly six million times. Each additional negative word increased click-through rates, while positive words had the opposite effect.It's crucial to recognize the tactics meant to exploit our negative biases and create cognitive distance (Image credit: cbies/Shutterstock.com)Recent studies suggest people around the world demonstrate measurably stronger physiological responses to negative news than to positive news. The body is reacting before the mind has decided whether the threat is relevant.Some researchers have introduced a clinical framework for what happens in this instance called Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning. In their 2022 study, the researchers found that 17% of American adults qualified as having severe levels of PNC. Among that group, 61% reported feeling unwell quite a bit or very much, compared with 6% of those who didn't.For minority populations, news fatigue may be even more consequential.Repeatedly witnessing harm directed at our own groups, even when we're not the immediate target, can have a significant psychological impact on people from the same group affiliation. For racialized communities, such as immigrants, the cognitive load could be even heavier, and the option to simply stop watching is much harder to exercise when the news is about their country of origin.Looking away is not the fixWhat's the solution to news fatigue? Well, it's not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens.Many adults already cite the spread of misleading information as a major source of stress. Withdrawing from accurate, trustworthy information only deepens the problem. We're wired to pay more attention to bad news, and that kind of content will find its way to us one way or another.The fix is to manage the consumption and the sources.Several approaches can help manage news fatigue and protect mental health. Containing news consumption to defined windows of time reduces the sense of being overwhelmed. Choosing depth over volume also matters: one carefully reported long-form article will inform you better than bursts of random, unreliable and emotionally loaded posts on Instagram.There is also value in distinguishing between information and action — research on perceived control and stress consistently shows that the gap between awareness and agency is one of the strongest predictors of psychological distress. Identifying what you can actually do about what you read in the news, however small, regulates that response.Finally, be wary of "rage bait" — intentionally provocative messages or content designed to boost engagement on social media platforms by eliciting negative reactions. Recognizing that certain content creators want to provoke rather than reflect reality creates useful cognitive distance.The news will not become less "heavy." But our relationship with it can become more deliberate. Our brains were not built for this scale of input. They were, however, built to learn to adapt.This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We rendered the new Hyundai IONIQ V in full N attire. Ioniq 6 N already offers a 641 hp template to borrow. A patented fake manual could add a real clutch pedal. When Hyundai pulled the wraps off its China-exclusive (for now) IONIQ V at Auto China 2026, the reaction was immediate, and most of it came down to the way it looks. Low-slung proportions and sharp angular surfacing that reads more Sant Agata than Seoul. Then you get to the spec sheet and find a single motor making 225 hp, which is a lot less drama than the bodywork suggests. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("0f7e3106-c4d6-4db4-8135-c508879a76f8"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("82503191-e1d1-435a-874f-9c78a2a54a2f"); } }); That gap between how it looks and how it moves invites one obvious thought: what would happen if Hyundai s N division got hold of it? Sure, there s no evidence to suggest such a model is being considered, yet the company has demonstrated with the Ioniq 5 and 6 N that it knows how to inject driver appeal into electric vehicles. Read: Hyundai s 2027 Elantra Is Bigger, Sharper, And Barely Recognizable Stretch the logic a little and the IONIQ V N starts to look like the spiritual successor to the Elantra N, only with the full weight of Hyundai s current EV tech behind it. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform === "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("ea4d4b5a-f8e5-4d5d-9d9a-53a3b956b6cd"); } else{ adpushup.triggerAd("44c0a4dc-e25b-4ba5-ac64-2c510461b92a"); } }); A Wicked Wedge Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops Our exclusive rendering imagines the IONIQ V in full N attire while preserving the dramatic, wedge-shaped aesthetic of the standard model. At the front, the aggressive fascia gains a deep splitter, larger cooling intakes and red accents seen on other N products. Also: BMW s i3 Sedan Divided The Internet, So We Drew The i4 Coupe Instead At 4.9 meters (193 inches), the Prius-on-steroids profile remains one of its defining features, with its heavily raked windscreen and fastback look. Larger wheels, performance brakes, subtle side skirts and lowered ride height help sharpen its stance. Out back, a more functional diffuser, discreet spoiler, and N-specific taillight elements help complete the transformation. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("bb7964e9-07de-4b06-a83e-ead35079d53c"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("9b1169d9-7a89-4971-a77f-1397f7588751"); } }); High Tech Cockpit The standard Ioniq V s interior. As with the exterior, the standard car s cabin would carry the concept s aesthetic into production largely intact. A 27-inch 4K panoramic display commands center stage, backed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 processor, customizable performance graphics, track-focused telemetry, and an AI-powered voice assistant. Future Cars: Hyundai s Venue-Sized Bayon Could Get A 140-HP Hybrid America Won t Other goodies would include an advanced head-up display with a lap-timer, Level 2 semi-autonomous highway driving, heavily bolstered sports seats with illuminated N logos, a sports steering wheel with N mode presets, and acres of Alcantara trim. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("b25ecba7-3bbb-4ea7-a3a8-dbea91695c07"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("e46c436a-adeb-4b5e-a2c7-56bc36561c10"); } }); Performance to Stun Based on Hyundai s 800-volt E-GMP architecture, the IONIQ V N could utilize the same dual-motor, all-wheel-drive powertrain from the Ioniq 6 N, which in that application generates north of 601 hp (448 kW) or 641 hp in N Grin boost mode. Also a possibility is the use of Hyundai s recently patented electronic manual transmission. This setup expands on the automaker s e-Shift technology by employing a gated shifter with six speeds (plus reverse), a clutch pedal, and software-controlled gear simulation to recreate a manual driving experience. Underneath, the chassis would get stiffer springs with adaptive damping, larger anti-roll bars, sharper torque vectoring, and upgraded brakes to keep the powertrain honest. Amped Alternatives The regular 2027 Ioniq V is expected to go on sale in China later this year. If Hyundai ever greenlights an IONIQ V N, such a model would face off against Tesla s Model 3 Performance, Polestar 4 Performance Pack, MG IM5 Performance, BYD Seal Performance, Xpeng P7 Ultra, and BMW i3. The standard car is widely expected to go global eventually, albeit not in the US, where Chinese cars are effectively blocked. If it does, the smart money says it ll land with more performance than the Chinese-market version makes today. Would you rather this over the Ioniq 6? Let us know in the comments below. Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops