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Good morning. Overnight strikes near the Strait of Hormuz pushed fears of a wider regional conflict back into focus as global markets weighed new energy risks. Texas Democrats picked a high-profile Senate challenger, scientists unveiled an AI system mapping more than a billion proteins, and Washington is facing fresh scrutiny over security and surveillance. We’re also covering the latest from the NBA and NHL playoffs, major business moves, and what Hollywood is talking about this week.

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In Q1 2026, the non-traded BDC market hit $20.8B in redemption requests — most investors received roughly half of what they asked for. Moody's revised the U.S. BDC sector outlook to Negative. Investors who thought they owned liquid private credit found out their fund manager decided whether they could get out.

On Percent's marketplace that same quarter: new issuances, scheduled payments, and a 0.44% lifetime net loss rate on asset-based deals that's held since inception.†

The difference is structural. BDCs often own concentrated corporate loans with quarterly redemption windows that close at the manager's discretion. Percent finances specialty lenders against pools of performing receivables — diversified, overcollateralized, short duration.

Track record through 3/31/26:†

See what private credit built for individual investors looks like.

^{Alternative investments are speculative. No assurance can be given that investors will receive a return of their capital. Secondary market transactions are subject to availability and issuer approval; liquidity is not guaranteed. †Past performance is not indicative of future results. Terms apply.}

The IRGC said it targeted a US base overnight in retaliation for American strikes on Iran's Bandar Abbas port city, escalating a fragile ceasefire that has barely held this week. Kuwait, which hosts a US base, said it intercepted "hostile missile and drone threats" without naming the source.

US Central Command described its actions as "measured, purely defensive" and said it had downed four Iranian one-way drones near the Strait of Hormuz overnight. Tehran condemned the strikes as a grave ceasefire violation and vowed that "no act of hostility" will go unanswered as tanker traffic remains stranded in the Strait.

State Rep. James Talarico won the Democratic Senate runoff and launched his general election campaign in Houston Wednesday night, framing Paxton as a "corrupt political establishment that uses power to serve itself." Talarico will face Ken Paxton in November after Paxton's primary win over four-term Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday.

Texas Democrats have not won a statewide race in three decades, but party strategists see Paxton's history of impeachment and federal scrutiny as their best opening in years. Talarico's first 24 hours are about fundraising velocity, with national money already moving into the state ahead of summer ad buys.

David Rush, a former top-secret-cleared CIA official, was arrested after agents found $40 million in gold bars along with $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches inside his home. Court filings describe a years-long scheme involving federal government gold that prosecutors say Rush diverted while still inside the agency.

Justice Department charging documents stop short of explaining how the gold left federal custody undetected for that long. Internal inspector-general teams are now reviewing CIA logistics chains, with parallel reviews underway for Treasury and other agencies that handle physical bullion or precious-metal reserves.

Sixteen students died when fire tore through dormitories at Utumishi Girls Academy in Gilgil, Kenya, while students were asleep around 1 a.m. Kenyan officials are investigating the cause; previous school fires in Kenya have been linked to arson, overcrowding, and ignored safety standards.

Bolivia's President Rodrigo Paz warned his country is "at breaking point" after a month of roadblocks by supporters of former President Evo Morales created fuel and food shortages in multiple regions. Paz called for dialogue while accusing protest leaders of staging a political coup ahead of upcoming elections.

Australia filed a landmark PFAS lawsuit against 3M over contamination at 28 defense bases, seeking AU$2 billion — the largest claim ever brought by the Australian government. 3M responded that it never manufactured PFAS chemicals in Australia and had stopped selling the relevant foam roughly 20 years ago.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation aimed at shielding California's June primary from federal interference, one of the most aggressive state-level responses to White House election posture yet. New law authorizes the state attorney general to sue federal agencies that interfere with election administration.

US forces struck another suspected drug vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people in the latest escalation of the administration's boat-strike campaign. The Pentagon has now conducted more than a dozen such strikes since spring, drawing constitutional questions from Senate Foreign Relations members.

A new Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey found food insecurity affects more families now than during the coronavirus pandemic, the latest signal of household-budget strain heading into summer. Grocery and fuel inflation tied to the Iran war is driving most of the deterioration across surveyed households.

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Federal prosecutors charged a Google employee with making $1.2 million on Polymarket using nonpublic Alphabet earnings data, the second insider-trading case against Polymarket users in a month. Southern District of New York filings allege a multi-month pattern of well-timed positions ahead of company news.

The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, with stock awards driving most of the gain as boards rewarded executives for record profits. Pay-ratio disclosures show several CEOs earned more than 1,000 times their median worker's salary last year.

Eli Lilly announced it will buy three privately held vaccine makers in deals worth nearly $4 billion combined, a major expansion of its therapeutic footprint beyond obesity drugs. Acquisition wave reshapes a vaccine sector already adjusting to lower federal R&D support under the current administration.

A new open-source AI model from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub has predicted the structures of 1.1 billion proteins — dwarfing the AlphaFold database by over 800 million entries. ESMFold2 outperforms AlphaFold3 at predicting protein complex interactions and draws heavily from environmental samples not previously cataloged.

The FAA grounded SpaceX Starship launches pending a formal investigation into last week's test flight, which the agency formally classified as a mishap. Starship's pause hits at the worst possible time for NASA's Artemis schedule, which depends on Starship for crewed lunar landings.

ICE is expanding its use of iris recognition with plans to deploy hundreds of scanning devices nationwide, raising fresh privacy concerns about a federal biometric database. Civil-liberties groups warn the rollout has moved faster than any disclosed legal review or congressional oversight.

Shohei Ohtani held the Rockies hitless through six innings Wednesday night while also homering as a pitcher — the third time in history he's done so, a feat no other player has ever achieved. Ohtani's ERA dropped to 0.82 through nine starts as Los Angeles won 4-1 for its fifth consecutive victory.

Connelly Early struck out seven across seven innings and Jarren Duran homered as Boston ended a five-game losing streak with an 8-0 win over Atlanta. Boston's pitching has produced more shutouts in May than in any month since the 2018 World Series run.

Frederik Andersen pitched a shutout as the Hurricanes moved one win from the Stanley Cup Final Wednesday night. Carolina's defensive structure has held opposing offenses to one combined goal across the last three games of this series.

Critics are calling "Disclosure Day" Spielberg's best film in 20 years, with Emily Blunt's performance as a TV meteorologist possessed by an extraterrestrial force described as career-defining. Written by David Koepp and co-starring Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, and Colman Domingo, the film opens June 12.

ElevenLabs struck an expansive deal with Stan Lee Universe to add the late Marvel writer's voice and likeness to its Iconic Marketplace. Agreement is one of the most expansive estate-licensed AI deals to date and reignites debate over posthumous performance rights across the industry.

Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry's live-in personal assistant, was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for his role in the actor's October 2023 ketamine overdose death. Iwamasa was the last of five people sentenced in the case; street dealer Jasveen Sangha received the longest sentence at 15 years.

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What it is: A feature published this week examines emerging memory science that is quietly dismantling decades of legal doctrine around eyewitness testimony. New "confidence-accuracy characteristic" analysis shows that a witness's first, highly confident identification can be accurate up to 97% of the time — far above what courts have assumed.

The detail: Previous research lumped two fundamentally different types of line-up error together — picking an innocent suspect versus picking a known filler — and that combination artificially weakened the apparent link between confidence and accuracy. Once researchers separated those error categories, a consistent signal emerged: early, high-confidence identifications track reality far better than judges and juries have been trained to assume.

Why it matters: US courts have spent decades instructing juries to treat eyewitness accounts with heavy skepticism, following a string of high-profile wrongful convictions — some of that caution was warranted, but the new research suggests the legal system overcorrected. A petition now before the US Supreme Court invokes this science in the case of death-row inmate Charles Don Flores, whose conviction rested on eyewitness testimony that evolved substantially between the initial police questioning and the witness stand — raising the question of whether decades of jury instructions have been pushing in exactly the wrong direction.

What to watch: Whether the Supreme Court takes up the Flores case could determine whether eyewitness jury instructions get overhauled nationwide. A favorable ruling would force courts to apply a more nuanced, evidence-based framework — distinguishing confident early identifications from those shaped by repetition, leading questions, or the passage of time.

Tomorrow’s headlines will move fast — forward this to someone who’d rather stay ahead of them in five minutes.

—The Five Minute Daily Team