The Thursday, June 25, 2026 Edition
Trump Blocks Housing Bill, Micron Earnings Quadruple, and a Spider's Catapult Web
5 min read
Sports, Entertainment & Culture
USMNT faces Turkey with Group D title already secured. Coach Mauricio Pochettino plans heavy rotation for Thursday's World Cup group finale. Players insist they're still playing to win, even with the Round of 32 berth already locked up.
NPR News
Fever coach calls out refs over hits on Caitlin Clark. Indiana's Stephanie White criticized officials after Clark left Wednesday's loss to Phoenix with a back injury, citing two 'cheap shots' including a fist to Clark's neck caught on video.
Bleacher Report
LaMelo Ball trade talks heating up in Charlotte. The Hornets are seriously engaged with multiple teams pursuing the star point guard -- potentially the summer's biggest NBA blockbuster, per ESPN sources.
ESPN
Phoebe Bridgers announces first album since Punisher. Lost Weekend arrives August 14, six years after her acclaimed 2020 debut solo LP. No singles have been released yet alongside the announcement.
Pitchfork
Science & Technology
World's first nuclear clocks use atomic nuclei to keep time. Two independent teams built clocks that track time via nuclear oscillations rather than electrons. The advance could open new searches for dark matter and tests of fundamental physics.
Smithsonian
Event horizon 'fingerprints' detected around a black hole for first time. Scientists identified distinct signal signatures at a black hole's event horizon — the point of no return for light and matter — in research published Wednesday.
Phys.org
IBM prototype chip packs 100 billion transistors onto a fingernail-sized area. The density is double IBM's previous best, and the company says the advance could extend Moore's Law — the trend of chips doubling in power — by another decade.
MIT Tech Review
Anthropic alleges Alibaba used fake accounts to extract Claude AI data. The U.S. AI company filed a legal claim accusing the Chinese tech giant of creating fraudulent accounts to illicitly access its Claude model, escalating U.S.-China AI tensions.
BBC World
Business & Markets
Oil prices erase all wartime gains. Tankers stranded in the Persian Gulf for months have begun transiting the Strait of Hormuz, easing global supply fears and pushing crude prices back to pre-conflict levels.
CNBC Top News
Fed stress tests clear all 32 large U.S. banks. The Fed found every major bank could absorb $708 billion in hypothetical losses, prompting JPMorgan to announce a $50 billion buyback and Goldman Sachs to raise its dividend.
CNBC Top News
Amazon commits $13 billion more to India. The additional investment, targeting AI and cloud infrastructure by 2030, brings Amazon's total India commitment to $48 billion.
Reuters
Chevron CFO says gas prices will normalize. The executive cited the Hormuz reopening as the key driver, after Trump ordered a Big Oil price-gouging investigation as pump prices remained elevated despite falling crude costs.
CNBC Top News
Politics & World
Rubio courts Gulf states on Iran deal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Bahrain officials on the final leg of a Middle East trip. He is seeking Gulf partner support for the Trump administration's preliminary Iran nuclear agreement -- a tough sell in a skeptical region.
Reuters
Postmaster general to withhold mail ballots. Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed the U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail-in ballots in states that refuse to share voter data with the federal government.
The Hill
Court rules Michigan need not share voter data. A divided 6th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Michigan is not required to hand over sensitive voter data to the Trump administration. The case could advance to the Supreme Court.
The Hill
France confirms first Ebola case. French health authorities confirmed an Ebola infection in a doctor who had worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Officials are tracing contacts and say the risk to the broader European public is very low.
The Guardian World
FBI warns of drone attacks reaching U.S. soil. FBI Deputy Director Chris Raia said battlefield-style drone attacks seen overseas will eventually reach the United States, warning that adversaries could remotely pilot drones over American cities.
Fox News Politics
30 years
The prison sentence handed to a Prairieland defendant convicted for moving a box of antifascist zines near a Texas ICE detention facility, according to The Intercept. For context, the average federal sentence for manslaughter is roughly 10 years — making this sentence three times longer for a nonviolent protest-related act.
Source: The Intercept
USMNT plays Turkey in the final Group D match of the 2026 World Cup, with the U.S. already through but rotation and fitness the story to watch.
Today, June 25
NBA free agency opens, with LaMelo Ball trade talks and other blockbuster moves expected to dominate the first days of the window.
Sunday, June 29
Phoebe Bridgers' new album Lost Weekend drops, her first solo release since Punisher in 2020.
August 14
Prairieland Defendant Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Moving a Box of Antifascist Zines
How a Texas federal prosecution turned moving a box of antifascist zines near an ICE facility into a 30-year prison sentence.
The Intercept · Matt Sledge
Will Pakistan's Iran Gamble Pay Off?
Why Pakistan's bid to broker a deal between Iran and the West is a high-stakes gamble that could reshape its regional standing — or backfire badly.
Foreign Policy · Michael Kugelman
British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn't Be Trusted
How British police built one of the world's most expansive crime-prediction systems — and why some of its outputs couldn't be trusted.
Wired · Matt Burgess, Mark Wilding
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
— Coco Chanel
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