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US District Judge Rita Lin ruled Thursday night that the Pentagon illegally blacklisted Anthropic as a supply-chain risk earlier this year. Anthropic had publicly criticized the Department of Defense's approach to using AI in military systems.

The decision is being read as a landmark First Amendment win for AI firms selling into US government contracts. Federal lawyers signaled they intend to appeal, but the immediate effect lifts the ban on Claude across the US military.

A Florida grand jury found that Governor Ron DeSantis's administration misappropriated $10 million that was diverted to Hope Florida, a charity run by First Lady Casey DeSantis. Grand jurors said the money was ultimately routed toward political spending tied to a marijuana ballot initiative.

No indictments were returned because prosecutors said they could not attribute the misuse to specific individuals with enough evidence to charge them. DeSantis's office has been silent since the report dropped, and Florida Democrats are already calling for an outside investigation.

Thousands of civil rights activists are gathering on the National Mall Friday for a rally marking the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Organizers say the rally is a direct response to a Supreme Court ruling this term that let Southern states redraw congressional maps mid-cycle.

Civil rights groups warn the redistricting decisions will erode Black voting power heading into the November midterms. Speakers include voting rights lawyers, state legislators, and family members of civil rights leaders whose districts are directly affected.

Three former organizers of Hong Kong's annual June 4 vigils returned to court Friday for arguments over the prison terms they now face. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are contesting punishment for the group that once ran the only mass Tiananmen commemoration on Chinese soil.

Norway's King Harald V died Friday at 89 after 35 years reigning, and Crown Prince Haakon has ascended as King Haakon VIII. Harald broke royal tradition by marrying a commoner and became one of the most personally popular monarchs in modern European history.

Ratko Mladic, the ex-Bosnian Serb general who oversaw the Srebrenica genocide, died Thursday at 84 while serving a life sentence at The Hague. Mladic commanded the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 and remained defiant of his convictions to the end.

US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the order again, freezing implementation for two weeks in the second such ruling this year. Mail ballots for the midterms begin going out in roughly a week, and the case could land back at the Supreme Court before they do.

The US, South Korea, and Japan will hold a trilateral military drill after North Korea vowed to retaliate against what it called American "hostilities" this week. Defense officials in Seoul said the exercise will focus on missile-defense scenarios and coordinated air response.

Andrew and Tristan Tate asked a Miami court for release while fighting extradition to Britain on rape and human trafficking charges. Appearing in tan jail uniforms, both denied the allegations and spent much of the hearing attacking conditions inside US federal custody.

Dollar General and Dollar Tree each reported gains in sales and store traffic as higher gas prices pushed shoppers to trim household spending. It's a real-time read on household budgets that softer official inflation data can miss.

Crypto custodian BitGo will acquire NYDIG's institutional trading business as digital-asset activity picks up after a prolonged slump. The deal consolidates the plumbing that hedge funds and asset managers use to move crypto at size.

DeepSeek is seeking fresh capital after running for years entirely on founder Liang Wenfeng's hedge fund, High-Flyer Quant. Chinese tech listings have turned choppy this year, complicating the timing for a lab that until now never needed anyone else's cash.

A 1,000-year coral record shows recent El Niños are unusually intense, and researchers say human-driven warming is the most likely explanation. Ocean scientists warned that stronger El Niño cycles will disrupt monsoons, fisheries, and hurricane seasons more sharply in the coming decades.

Physicists say they've cracked a long-standing mystery of missing neutrinos, one of the more stubborn discrepancies in the Standard Model. New detector data reconciles solar and atmospheric counts by refining how neutrinos oscillate between three flavors as they travel.

BBC Verify counted 18 deaths and nearly 700 injuries in fires caused by e-bikes, e-scooters and their lithium batteries. Victims include people who inhaled toxic fumes or were trapped inside burning homes, and almost half the incidents started in a house or garage.

Chris Sale, 37, finished a 1-0 shutout to sweep the defending champion Dodgers, telling manager Walt Weiss, "This is mine" at 97 pitches. Sale's two fastest pitches since 2018 both went to Shohei Ohtani, and his 2.06 ERA now ranks second in all of baseball.

George Lombard Jr. extended an ugly streak Thursday, committing an error in a sixth consecutive game during a 5-1 loss to Houston. Seven errors in 20 career games have followed a debut in which he became the first Yankees shortstop ever to homer.

Sean McVay insists Thursday's trade for receiver Tutu Atwell had "nothing to do" with a possible suspension for two-time Pro Bowler Puka Nacua. Los Angeles closed the preseason 3-0 with a 20-18 win over the Chargers, and McVay called the move a bet on speed.

Min Woo Lee posted a bogey-free 62 at East Lake to open the Tour Championship, matching his career best. His two-shot lead over Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa, and Chris Gotterup gives the Australian a real shot at the FedEx Cup title in his debut.

Variety calls James Ashcroft's serial-killer procedural a diverting chiller that asks remarkably little of Robert De Niro. Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton fill out the first screen adaptation of British crime novelist Steve Mosby.

Alabama Shakes are back after 11 years with a new album, "I Must Be Dreaming", following a low-key reunion at a food-pantry benefit at an Alabama brewery. Brittany Howard reunited with her original bandmates and quickly moved from stage rehearsals to a full studio project.

AMC Theatres will run a nationwide Dolly Parton tribute with special screenings of "Steel Magnolias" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" following the singer's recent death. Participating theaters will run the shows across the chain in the coming weeks.

What it is: Six months after US and Israeli forces struck Iran's nuclear and military sites, the Middle East looks nothing like the picture Washington and Jerusalem painted when the operation began. Regime change did not follow, popular protests in Tehran never crystallized, and the region's balance of influence has shifted in directions almost no one inside the coalition anticipated at the outset.

The detail: A fresh reassessment of the campaign finds Iran's leadership has consolidated rather than fractured, using the strikes to marginalize domestic dissidents and reframe the war at home as evidence of Western aggression. Tehran has extracted fresh concessions from Gulf states by leveraging its position along the Strait of Hormuz, its proxy networks in Iraq and Yemen remain intact and active, and nonproliferation analysts tracking rebuilt centrifuge capacity now believe enrichment has quietly returned to pre-strike levels.

Why it matters: Gulf states that quietly welcomed the operation at the time are now openly hedging their positions, buying Chinese air-defense systems and opening side channels to Tehran that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Israel's political consensus around the operation has cracked as well, with opposition figures arguing the country got the war it asked for and paid a strategic price it never fully budgeted for — including a rebuilt Iranian nuclear program, damaged Gulf normalization, and an economy still absorbing reservist call-ups.

What to watch: Whether the Trump team pivots to a new negotiating framework or doubles down on economic isolation and secondary sanctions, and whether Gulf capitals stay inside the US security umbrella as their hedging deepens into open realignment. Any Gulf capital that formalizes what has so far been only implicit — a partial de-alignment from Washington — could reshape the region for a decade and hand Beijing a security role in the Gulf that it has spent years quietly building toward.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team