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House Republicans are making a third push to renew a powerful surveillance program, this time with concessions that could finally get it across the line. A fragile Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been extended, but negotiations are already splitting as Iran remains on a separate, more volatile track.

Meanwhile, a White House memo accusing Chinese firms of large-scale AI model copying is setting up potential sanctions and retaliation. Intelligence, diplomacy, and technology are all colliding—and none of these fights are settled yet.

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Speaker Mike Johnson put a rewritten surveillance bill on the House calendar on Thursday, his third attempt this month to extend the authorities at the core of Section 702 after two earlier drafts collapsed on the floor. The new version concedes a warrant requirement for some US person queries while keeping the underlying collection program largely intact.

Civil liberties Democrats and libertarian Republicans have both signaled openness to the compromise. The intelligence committee is warning that the warrant carve out will slow terror tippers in practice and cost the FBI real lead time.

A vote could come as early as Monday, and the Senate is preparing a short stopgap in case the House slips again. Tech platforms that host the bulk of Section 702 collection are already drafting new compliance regimes for either outcome.

President Trump announced a three-week ceasefire extension between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday, buying both sides time to work through a prisoner file and a disputed border stretch that nearly broke the line last month. Administration officials say the White House wants a wider regional deal signed before midsummer, with Saudi normalization as the anchor prize.

In the same set of remarks, Trump said he would not rush a separate track with Iran. Tehran answered within hours by invoking what state media called iron unity among the Supreme Leader, the military, and the parliament.

European envoys are watching the widening gap between the two tracks, aware that an extended Lebanon peace does not by itself cool the Iranian file. The next pressure point is a Gulf foreign ministers meeting in Doha on Monday, where the American plan will land in front of a room that is already split on it.

A White House technology memo released Thursday morning accuses Chinese companies of wholesale distillation of American AI models, saying the practice has let Chinese labs match US capabilities at a fraction of the training cost. The memo, drafted by technology adviser Michael Kratsios, cites an intelligence assessment covering the last eighteen months.

The document argues the copying has been industrial scale, running through scraping, proxy accounts, and outright API abuse. US model providers have known about the pattern for more than a year but have been reluctant to talk on the record about how much it has already cost them.

The memo also lays the groundwork for new export controls on inference chips and a fresh round of sanctions on the scraping infrastructure. Beijing has called the accusations politically motivated, and trade watchers expect retaliation on soybean and Boeing orders before the weekend.

Open source analysts say a masked boarding video released by Iran of two container ships in the Gulf was partly filmed hours after the seizures were already underway, raising fresh questions about Tehran's choreography of the confrontation.

A drone strike in southern Lebanon killed a journalist, prompting Beirut to accuse Israel of a war crime and intensifying tensions. The incident adds strain to a fragile ceasefire and raises concerns over civilian safety and accountability.

A podcast clip in which Kenyan president William Ruto mocked the spoken English of Nigerians has ignited a full diplomatic spat, with Abuja summoning the Kenyan high commissioner on Thursday morning.

A United States Army officer was charged this week with insider trading for winning $400,000 on Polymarket by betting that Venezuela would remove Nicolas Maduro, allegedly trading on classified intelligence pulled from a Southern Command briefing.

Officials across the southeast declared emergencies as hundreds of wildfires raced through drought-hardened pine stands from the Okefenokee into central Florida, with evacuations underway and charred cars lining rural roads.

A new NPR investigation tracks how a generation of private equity buyers turned the single-family rental into its own asset class, pushing median prices in Sun Belt cities beyond the reach of local wages.

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Intel’s stock was set to top its 2000 high after first-quarter results showed adjusted earnings of 29 cents a share and revenue growth of 7% through a stock surge. Investor enthusiasm signals that AI infrastructure demand is broadening beyond graphics chips into server CPUs.

A Bank of England deputy governor told a City audience stock markets are overvalued and vulnerable to a sharp repricing in the months ahead, remarks unusually blunt for the Bank that rattled the FTSE futures book before London opened.

A companion action to the White House technology memo put roughly a dozen Chinese firms on the Commerce Department's entity list, with the administration citing model distillation and inference chip smuggling.

A 100 million-year-old snake fossil with preserved hind legs and a previously unknown bone is reshaping how scientists understand snake evolution. The discovery suggests early snakes had more complex anatomy than once believed, offering new insight into how modern species developed.

South Korean police arrested a man for posting an AI-generated image of an escaped zoo wolf that ran riot across local news feeds and triggered a regional school lockdown, and lawmakers are now drafting a misinformation amendment that carries jail time for lifelike fabrications.

A new chimp conflict study finds that splintering chimpanzee groups form rival coalitions that mirror early stages of human civil wars. Findings suggest the roots of organized conflict may be deeply embedded in primate social behavior rather than uniquely human systems.

The Las Vegas Raiders opened the NFL Draft by taking the Notre Dame quarterback Daniel Mendoza at number one overall, ending a year of trade speculation and setting up an immediate competition with Gardner Minshew.

Nelly Korda shot a seven-under opening round to take the Chevron lead at the season's first major, with England's Bronte Law Rhodes tied third after a bogey-free back nine.

Indian Premier League organizers floated a proposal to co-fund a twenty-thousand-seat cricket stadium in Los Angeles ahead of the 2028 Olympics, arguing the league's American viewership has outgrown the temporary New York venue.

The University of Queensland Press dropped an Aboriginal children's book after its illustrator's social media about the Bondi knife attack resurfaced, and several Indigenous authors have now cut ties with the press in protest, the deepest rift in Australian publishing in years.

Lena Dunham told an NPR interviewer she spent years managing friction with Adam Driver on the set of Girls, a thread she expands in her new memoir Famesick.

An NPR economics team used opening week ticket sales for Devil Wears Prada 2 as an informal demand gauge, cross referencing SNAP enrollment and flight cancellations for a read that points to a weaker May than most analysts have priced in.

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Tensions between the United States and China are escalating as new allegations surface that Chinese firms have engaged in large-scale extraction of artificial intelligence models and training data. What was once viewed primarily as a competitive business dynamic is now being reframed as a national security concern, with officials warning that access to advanced algorithms and datasets can carry strategic implications far beyond the private sector.

Artificial intelligence systems depend heavily on vast, carefully curated datasets and proprietary training techniques that take years and billions of dollars to develop. If that underlying data or model architecture is replicated without authorization, it can significantly reduce the advantage held by the original developers, allowing rivals to accelerate progress without bearing the same costs. This dynamic raises concerns not only about fairness in global markets but also about the long-term incentives for innovation if intellectual property protections weaken.

The situation reflects a broader transformation in how economic competition is unfolding, with data and algorithms now treated as critical assets similar to energy resources or advanced manufacturing capabilities. Governments are increasingly stepping in to protect domestic technology sectors, linking corporate intellectual property to national security policy and expanding scrutiny over cross-border data flows, research partnerships, and digital infrastructure.

Looking ahead, the dispute is likely to drive stricter export controls, stronger cybersecurity enforcement, and more aggressive responses to suspected breaches. The outcome will not only shape the trajectory of U.S.-China relations but also influence how the global community defines ownership, access, and protection in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.

A loose pig wandered through a North Carolina neighborhood before authorities safely captured it, turning the situation into an unexpected chase.

Drivers did a double-take when a kangaroo started hopping along a Texas highway near a coffee truck before it was safely caught.

Reports of Bigfoot sightings are popping up again, spilling into media and live shows as folklore blends with entertainment.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team