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Missiles and drones hammered Kyiv overnight as Ukraine warned air defenses are being stretched to the limit. Cuba is now facing worsening blackouts after officials acknowledged the island has effectively run out of fuel, while a major aging study found both too little and too much sleep may accelerate biological decline.

Elsewhere, AI money keeps flooding Wall Street, Washington and Beijing traded mixed signals, and quantum researchers cleared another milestone.

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TAKE CONTROL

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President Trump opened his Beijing summit with hours of platitudes, while Xi Jinping warned of "possible confrontation" between the two countries. Initial discussions ran nearly two hours and covered the Iran war, trade, and Taiwan with no public deliverables.

China-watchers read the gap between the public posture and the closed-door tone as classic Xi diplomacy. Trade analysts will scrutinize any tariff or chip movement before the delegation departs Beijing — US-China trade has already collapsed under prior tariffs.

A massive Russian drone-and-missile barrage struck Kyiv overnight, killing one and injuring 31 across six districts of the Ukrainian capital. Rescuers spent Thursday morning digging through the rubble of struck apartment blocks as Russia hit multiple Ukrainian cities in the same wave.

The attack lands as Western military aid pipelines are stretched thin by US weapons stockpiles diverted toward the Iran war. Kyiv officials are searching for victims in struck apartment blocks as Russia's strike tempo climbs faster than Ukraine can absorb.

Senate Republicans defeated a Democratic effort to halt the Iran war this week, but Lisa Murkowski crossed over to side with Democrats. Her vote signaled growing GOP unease about costs and a war approaching its eleventh week without a defined end.

Murkowski has long been the conference's most independent Republican, and her defection lands as the chamber digests Hegseth's recent grilling on dwindling weapons stockpiles. More GOP senators are quietly asking the same questions — the gap between the White House line and the conference is widening.

President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected reports that CIA Ground Branch operatives directly participated in deadly strikes on cartel members inside Mexico. Sheinbaum said any unreported foreign-agent activity in Chihuahua would violate the 2020 national security law.

Cuba's energy minister said the country has effectively run out of diesel and oil, with widespread blackouts spreading and protests breaking out in Havana. Tightened US sanctions and global supply pressures from the Iran war have together choked off the island's already-thin fuel pipeline.

Gunfire broke out inside the Philippine Senate on Tuesday as authorities tried to arrest Senator Ronald Dela Rosa over an ICC matter. Senate security and police clashed briefly inside the chamber, an unprecedented scene in Philippine politics.

South Carolina prosecutors will retry Alex Murdaugh for the 2021 family killings after the state supreme court overturned his 2023 convictions. He remains in custody on separate financial-crimes convictions, with no new trial date set.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to bar former lawmakers from lobbying after they leave office. Sponsors call it one of the toughest post-employment restrictions ever attempted, targeting the long-running revolving door between the Hill and K Street.

Political organizer Denise Powell defeated State Senator John Cavanaugh for the Democratic nomination in Nebraska's second congressional district. Powell now heads to a November race that could decide House control.

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Cisco's stock jumped 17% after surging AI infrastructure orders blew past expectations, the rare networking name riding the AI wave. Layoffs of nearly 4,000 employees came with the same earnings release, a reminder that AI growth still arrives with cost cuts.

AI chipmaker Cerebras priced its IPO above range, raising $5.55 billion as Wall Street braces for a wave of AI hardware listings. Demand was heaviest from institutional investors looking for Nvidia alternatives, with bankers signaling more AI listings still queued for later in 2026.

SoftBank reported a $46 billion Vision Fund gain driven almost entirely by its OpenAI stake, which was marked up to $79.6 billion after the $852 billion March funding round. The firm posted a full-year net profit of 5 trillion yen.

A massive new analysis links sleeping six to eight hours to slower biological aging, with the optimal range between 6.4 and 7.8 hours. Researchers used UK Biobank data spanning ages 37 to 84 and aging-clock biomarkers to draw the U-shaped curve.

Kyoto University scientists described a new way to instantly detect quantum W states, a long-elusive multi-particle entanglement signature, with potential applications in quantum communication, teleportation, and computing. The team said the technique pushes photonic systems closer to scalable platforms.

Researchers found a repeating geometric pattern inside Chinese money plant leaves that helps regulate growth and nutrient flow. Scientists believe the discovery could shape future research in plant biology, materials science, and energy-efficient design.

Kyle Bradish took a no-hitter into the fifth inning as Baltimore blanked New York 7-0 at Camden Yards for the team's first shutout of the season. Max Fried was pulled after three innings and faces a medical exam.

Brett Kulak scored in overtime as the Avalanche erased a 3-0 deficit to beat Minnesota 4-3 and advance to the Western Conference final. Colorado will face the winner of Vegas-Anaheim, which Vegas leads 3-2 heading into Game 6 today.

The Cavaliers erased a late nine-point deficit to beat Detroit 117-113 in OT and take a 3-2 series lead. Cleveland notched its first road playoff win of the postseason in a game it nearly let slip.

Miami Dolphins running back De'Von Achane signed a four-year, $64 million extension, making him the third-highest-paid running back in the NFL. Achane has emerged as the Dolphins' primary offensive weapon over the past two seasons.

Leiden researchers argued that 11th-century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury linked the 989 and 1066 comet sightings nearly 700 years before Edmond Halley, raising the question of who should get naming rights. His chronicled cry on seeing it return clocked an effective 77-year period.

Netflix is ending The Lincoln Lawyer with its upcoming fifth season, currently in production with six new recurring guest stars. Mickey Haller fans get one more cycle of legal twists before the show signs off for good.

Comedian Margaret Cho says she passed on Heated Rivalry because she feared being detained by ICE on her return through the Canadian border. She named the Trump administration's enforcement policies as the reason a Canadian shooting suddenly looked too risky.

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What it is: A new wave of generative AI can now design proteins, viruses, and toxins with disturbing precision, prompting urgent calls for the same kind of export controls applied to nuclear material to be applied to biological AI software. Scientists are now openly debating the right balance between open research and the risk of bioweapon design — whether accidental or intentional.

The detail: The most capable protein-design models can generate plausible candidates for never-before-seen molecules in hours, while structure-prediction tools can score how dangerous a given design might be. Industry self-governance — pledges, red-teaming, audit logs — is patchy, and the largest models are downloadable open weights rather than locked behind APIs.

Why it matters: Most known biological agents capable of mass casualties are well-studied and well-defended against, but novel synthetic pathogens could evade existing vaccines, diagnostics, and antibiotics. A single bad actor or even a misaligned student with cloud GPU credits could, in principle, iterate toward harmful biology in a way that was previously confined to state-level labs.

What to watch: Biden-era executive orders on dual-use AI sunsetted last year, with Congress yet to pass a successor framework of any consequence and the White House signaling no urgency. Over the next 90 days, the science community will need to decide whether to self-organize around access controls and red-team mandates — or wait for a high-profile near-miss to force the issue from outside, in a regulatory environment likely to look much harsher after any real incident.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team