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A shake-up atop the U.S. intelligence community, new testimony about Jeffrey Epstein's efforts to cultivate powerful connections, and a historic moment at Barcelona's Sagrada Família lead today's edition. We'll also cover Taiwan's latest military signal toward China, fresh tensions in the Gulf, stubborn inflation that's keeping the Fed cautious, and new research that could change how scientists think about Alzheimer's disease and the origins of life.

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President Trump said Bill Pulte will take over as director of national intelligence on June 19 — while keeping his current post atop the federal housing agency. A dual role is unusual for a job that runs the country's intelligence community and briefs the president every morning.

Capitol Hill is already pushing back. Lawmakers are mid-negotiation on renewing a contested foreign surveillance authority, and senators from both parties have signaled they want a full-time nominee before signing off on the spying powers.

Bill Gates told House Oversight Committee investigators that Jeffrey Epstein sought to use information about his extramarital affairs to gain access to him and strengthen their relationship. The account emerged during congressional efforts to better understand how Epstein cultivated connections with prominent figures.

Gates said the interactions left him uncomfortable and reinforced his decision to distance himself from Epstein. The testimony adds a new detail to ongoing scrutiny of Epstein's relationships with influential business, political, and philanthropic leaders.

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass at Barcelona's Sagrada Família on Wednesday, blessing the newly completed Tower of Jesus Christ — a 566-foot ceramic-crowned spire that makes Gaudí's 143-year-old masterpiece the tallest church in the world. More than 4,000 people attended, including 200 cardinals and bishops, for a homily in which Leo declared that Christians "cannot promote war."

Wednesday's Mass marks the 100th anniversary of Gaudí's death and the capstone of Leo's week-long trip to Spain — the first papal visit to the country in 15 years. Leo's message against war landed with unusual weight in a basilica packed with church leaders whose institution has lately struggled to hold influence over a world at war.

Taiwan's military fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets into the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday — the first time the mobile launch systems have been used to fire in China's direction. Plans to sell Taiwan 82 more HIMARS systems appear stalled after Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing last month.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards launched missiles and drones at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain — both partner states — as well as a base in Jordan, prompting sharp condemnations from Qatar, the UAE, and Egypt. European Council President António Costa called diplomacy "the only path" to stability and urged all parties to remain engaged.

A man was shot dead during protests in Kenya against a proposed U.S.-funded Ebola quarantine facility, with demonstrations erupting over plans to build the site. The incident highlighted growing tensions surrounding public health measures as officials and local residents clash over how to prepare for potential outbreaks.

Democrat Graham Platner won Maine's Senate primary with nearly 75% of the vote Tuesday night, setting up a fall race against incumbent Republican Susan Collins — the only GOP senator representing a state carried by Kamala Harris in 2024. Maine's gubernatorial race remains uncalled due to ranked-choice voting, with results potentially days away.

The Southern Baptist Convention approved an amendment tightening its ban on female pastors at its annual gathering. The measure has to pass again next year before it enters the denomination's constitution.

Three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian filed suit Wednesday to block construction of a proposed 250-foot Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle near Arlington National Cemetery, arguing the project violates the Commemorative Works Act without Congressional authorization. Public comments remain open through June 15 while the National Park Service continues to accept feedback.

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OpenAI and Anthropic both filed confidential IPO prospectuses within the past week, following SpaceX's debut set for Friday; combined, the three offerings could be the largest in stock market history. Anthropic is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion per month for three years for data center capacity, while Google is paying $920 million per month for 110,000 Nvidia GPUs at SpaceX's xAI Colossus 1 facility.

New inflation data showed price pressures remain stubborn enough to keep Federal Reserve officials cautious about lowering interest rates in the near term. Investors have pushed back expectations for a rate cut as policymakers look for clearer evidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward the Fed's 2% target.

German humanoid robotics firm Neura Robotics raised up to $1.4 billion in a Series C backed by Nvidia, Amazon, Qualcomm, Bosch, and the European Investment Bank, valuing the company at roughly $7 billion. Robotics firms have raised $55.8 billion globally in 2026 alone — nearly double last year's record — as investors pile into physical AI.

Researchers identified a previously underappreciated mechanism in Alzheimer's and built a compound that interrupts it. The work pushes the field past its decades-long focus on amyloid plaques and tau tangles.

China's underground JUNO neutrino observatory published its first peer-reviewed results in Nature, measuring neutrino oscillation parameters with 1.6 times better precision than all previous experiments combined — using just 59 days of data. JUNO's ultimate goal is to determine the "mass ordering" of neutrinos, one of the deepest unresolved questions in particle physics.

Scientists have proposed a new theory suggesting that life on Earth may have emerged through self-organizing chemical networks that became increasingly complex before the first true cells appeared. The research offers an alternative perspective on one of science's oldest questions and could reshape how researchers search for the earliest signs of life both on Earth and beyond it.

The NBA declined to upgrade a no-call on Wembanyama's first-quarter shove of Jalen Brunson in Game 3, keeping him at two flagrant points for the playoffs. At four points, players are automatically suspended — a threshold Wembanyama was approaching after a flagrant-2 elbow in the second round.

Lionel Messi scored as Argentina defeated Iceland in a pre-World Cup friendly at Auburn, Alabama, in one of the team's final matches before the tournament begins. The win gives the defending champions another positive result as they prepare to open their World Cup campaign.

LeBron James declared himself the greatest of all time in a new Time magazine profile, saying "I'm not taking nobody over me," while acknowledging Jordan and others would likely say the same. James is weighing whether to play a 24th season or retire as the league's all-time scoring leader and four-time champion.

AMC Theatres postponed planned live concert simulcasts from Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras, and Maren Morris. The chain pointed to a stronger-than-expected summer box office, including titles like "Backrooms" and "Scary Movie."

The Academy will honor Glenn Close and Ridley Scott with Honorary Oscars at the November Governors Awards — Close for eight nominations without a win, Scott for three directing nominations and none. Producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films will also receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for their decades of independent film production.

The BBC canceled the planned 2026 Christmas special and placed Doctor Who out to competitive tender for new production partners, with showrunner Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf officially exiting the franchise. Disney+ had already departed its co-production deal last year after Ncuti Gatwa left the role of the Doctor after two seasons.

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What it is: A study published today in Nature offers the most detailed picture of global human migration ever assembled, tracking 230 countries annually from 1990 to 2023 using AI models trained on UN data, national statistics, and Facebook activity. Global movement has nearly tripled — from 13 million people per year in 2000 to 35 million in 2023 — a change so large and so recent that most existing datasets never captured it.

The detail: Traditional migration figures are collected at five- to ten-year intervals and miss short-term or undocumented moves entirely, leaving governments working from snapshots that are often a decade out of date. Researchers Thomas Gaskin and Guy Abel filled those gaps with deep-learning models that estimate annual flow volumes even in countries with unreliable official statistics — producing a resolution of data that simply didn't exist before this week.

Why it matters: Migration sits at the center of multiple crises unfolding today: the ICE detention scandal, Trump's immigration bill, a World Cup host country accused of making international visitors unwelcome, conflicts driving displacement in Sudan and Gaza. Decisions made on decade-old data are, effectively, decisions made blind — and this study suggests governments have been dramatically underestimating the speed and scale of movement for years.

What to watch: The maps show migration accelerating most sharply out of Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia — precisely the regions generating the most political friction in the United States and Europe. Expect these datasets to surface quickly in immigration policy debates, both as evidence that movement is accelerating and as a tool to contest official government numbers.

- Officials in Masterton, New Zealand, asked visitors to stop using a local fernery as a toilet after repeated reports of human waste being left at the reserve, prompting a public appeal from the district council.

- A skunk spotted wandering along a road in Fife, Scotland, sparked a search by animal rescuers, who believe the animal may have escaped from captivity.

- An escaped African serval was found hiding beneath a porch in British Columbia after wildlife officials and local residents spent days searching for the exotic cat.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team