Amazon is expanding its same-day grocery business. Prime members in 1,000 cities and towns will be able to order perishables like "blueberries and milk" and "get them within hours," said The Associated Press. And that number will expand to 2,300 municipalities by the end of the year. 

Amazon is "all but fist-fighting your local grocer," said Morning Brew. The company already accounts for 20% of the grocery market, while Walmart leads with 30%. The new expansion is "bad news for delivery apps and retailers," said MarketWatch.

What did the commentators say?
Amazon has taken a "long and sometimes bumpy" road to grocery dominance, Jason Del Rey said at Fortune. The company has made a series of "grocery-related launches, failures and pivots" to establish itself in the sector, beginning and then canceling a two-hour Prime Now service in major cities and buying Whole Foods in 2017. 

Adding perishables to the lineup could make a huge difference to the business. "Selling a book or a TV is great," said Doug Herrington, the CEO of Amazon Worldwide Stores. But those are occasional purchases. Groceries are a "high-frequency purchase category" that will increase each customer's "lifetime value," said Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney. 

Americans will now be able to "shop for apples and AirPods in the same transaction," Jack O'Leary said at NIQ. That's a huge challenge to traditional grocers, who will be under pressure to maintain in-store sales while also "rapidly scaling digital capabilities." Consumers will "expect flexibility and speed" and grocers who cannot deliver "risk irrelevance." We could be witnessing a shift in the grocery industry from "brick-and-mortar to online-first platforms."

What next?
Free same-day delivery on orders of $25 or more will be available to Prime members, said Yahoo Finance. And nonmembers will be able to get deliveries for a $12.99 service fee.

But Amazon's "aggressive move" does not change the fact that it has a "relatively small brick-and-mortar presence" in an industry where traditional stores "play an essential role in connecting with customers," said Grocery Dive. Without bricks-and-mortar, it's "hard to win, as most shoppers still buy in person," said Arun Sundaram at CFRA Research.

The world is seemingly going to the rats, as the U.K. is currently facing a significant infestation of rodents. But Britain isn't the only place dealing with rat issues, as several thousand miles away California farmers are trying to fight off an infestation that's causing significant problems for the almond industry. 

This influx of rats could devastate not only the almond supply in the U.S. but globally. California is responsible for 80% of the world's almond supply, according to the USDA, so producers are trying to stop the rats before they get out of control.  

What's happening?
Almond growers are "facing an unprecedented challenge this season as a severe roof rat infestation" affects portions of California's Central Valley, said the Almond Board of California. The rats are likely "using irrigation canals and other waterways as corridors, enabling them to rapidly spread between orchards and diverse agricultural fields."   

These roof rats, commonly called black rats or house rats, are "arboreal, meaning they spend a considerable amount of their life above ground, often building nests in trees," said the Almond Board. But over the last several years, researchers have noted that "in almonds and other tree nuts, they use burrows extensively."

There's "no clear-cut explanation for why rats on a large scale" have suddenly "developed a taste for nut trees," said USA Today. But it could decimate the almond industry, as the infestation has already "impacted more than 100,000 acres and caused $109 million to $311 million in losses from damage to equipment and crops over a year." And the rats just keep coming. At least one almond grower has been "exterminating between 50 to 100 rats a day," said the Almond Board.

How are farmers fighting back? 
They are "using bait stations and aluminum phosphide treatments in burrows" in the winter and, during non-winter months, are "turning to snap traps, owl boxes and fumigating the rats by applying carbon monoxide" into rat burrows, said the Los Angeles Times. But these methods are often labor-intensive and expensive and may not be enough. 

"We have never seen anything like this," said Roger Isom, the chief executive at the Western Tree Nut Association, to USA Today. "I have had growers who have lost more than half their yield."

A marine iguana sneezes out salt after a foraging dive in the Galapagos. The image's photographer, Arturo de Frías, is one of the finalists in the wildlife category of the 2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition, with the winners to be named next month.
Arturo de Frías / Ocean Photographer of the Year

A handful of artists have excelled at both music and acting. For these singers-cum-actors, performing on the big screen is not just something they dabbled in but rather an entire second career. 

Barbra Streisand
Broadway star Barbra Streisand made her film debut in 1968's "Funny Girl," an adaptation of the stage musical she also starred in, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She later played idealistic young leftist Katie in the bittersweet 1973 romance "The Way We Were," acting opposite Robert Redford (both pictured above). Here, Streisand proved herself to be the "brightest, quickest female actress in movies," said Roger Ebert, able to inhabit her characters with a "fierce energy" yet also be "touchingly vulnerable." 

Cher
This legend rose to fame as one half of the musical duo Sonny & Cher alongside her first husband, Sonny Bono. In the 1980s, she branched out into serious acting and won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the romantic comedy "Moonstruck" (1987), a movie that felt "completely true to people as they are: ridiculous and passionate," said The New Yorker. After starring in "Mermaids" (1990), Cher refocused her career on music.

Ice Cube
Ice Cube recently starred in Amazon Prime's critically panned "War of the Worlds." But the former lead rapper for pioneering hip-hop band N.W.A. has enjoyed a decades-long acting career, perhaps most notably starring in and co-writing the 1995 comedy classic "Friday," a stoner buddy comedy set in South Central Los Angeles, and playing a gang member in John Singleton's "Boyz n the Hood" (1991). This heartbreaking film "showed how white supremacy set the conditions that ended in neighborhoods devastated by crime and, ultimately, violence," said The New York Times.