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The Supreme Court reshaped key legal questions this week, preserving late-arriving mail ballots in 18 states while expanding presidential power over independent agencies but shielding the Federal Reserve.

We'll also cover the deadly shooting at a German welfare center, Comcast's landmark breakup, NASA's plan to rescue a falling space telescope, and the healthcare billing loophole producing astonishing payouts for some surgical assistants.

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In a 6-3 ruling, the high court upheld state laws that allow mail ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day, provided they are postmarked on time. The decision preserves grace-period policies in 18 states and marks another setback for the administration's broader push to tighten federal election rules.

The challengers had argued that federal law sets Election Day as a single fixed deadline, but the majority disagreed. The ruling lands months before the midterms, settling a question that had spawned dozens of lawsuits in recent cycles.

A gunman killed six people at a welfare centre in Stade, near Hamburg, opening fire during a custody appointment over his infant daughter. A custody dispute was the stated reason for his visit; he was detained at a roadblock after fleeing by car.

The three-month-old baby and her mother were in the office at the time but were unharmed; authorities confirmed no further public threat remained. Germany's interior minister called it "an act of horrific violence against those who dedicate their lives to protecting families."

The Supreme Court issued twin rulings Monday that broadened President Trump's authority to dismiss officials at independent regulatory agencies for any reason, while carving out a specific exception for the Federal Reserve. The justices held that Fed governors cannot be fired at will, citing the central bank's unique historical and structural role.

The split decision reshapes the long-running debate over the so-called "fourth branch" of government and the agencies that have operated at arm's length from the White House since the New Deal. Wall Street had been watching closely, with traders pricing in real anxiety about political pressure on monetary policy.

A 45-year-old man opened fire at a youth facility in the town of Stade after a dispute over custody of his infant daughter, killing six people who all worked at the facility. It is one of the deadliest shootings on German soil in years, in a country with some of Europe's strictest gun laws.

South Africa's President Ramaphosa warned anti-migrant protesters against intimidation ahead of marches planned for Tuesday in Durban and Johannesburg. Over 12,000 immigrants have been deported since protests began; xenophobic violence remains the central concern as an unofficial deadline for undocumented foreigners passed Monday.

France's national health agency estimated about 1,000 excess deaths during the recent heat wave, with hundreds more daily fatalities than normal in the worst stretch. The toll renews pressure on the government to expand cooling infrastructure ahead of what forecasters expect to be a punishing July.

The court agreed to decide whether Arizona can require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The case lands as the Trump administration pushes states to adopt stricter registration rules nationwide.

The Colorado Supreme Court rejected ballot initiatives designed to install a new gerrymandered congressional map favoring Democrats. The ruling closes a workaround that party strategists had hoped would offset Republican-led redraws elsewhere.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco agreed to pay $395 million to settle roughly 530 clergy sex-abuse claims. It is one of the largest such settlements ever reached by an American Catholic diocese.

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Comcast announced it will spin NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate publicly traded company, severing the media and entertainment empire from its cable and broadband business in a tax-free transaction. The breakup is the boldest restructuring yet from a legacy media giant trying to escape cord-cutting gravity.

Building-materials firm Martin Marietta agreed to acquire limestone supplier Lhoist North America for $13.5 billion in cash and stock. The deal locks in supply for cement, steel and infrastructure projects benefiting from federal construction spending.

BT and Verizon agreed to merge their international corporate operations into a 50/50 joint venture worth roughly $4 billion. The tie-up ends BT's 18-month hunt for a buyer for its global services arm.

NASA is preparing a rescue mission to grab its Swift space telescope mid-fall and boost it back into orbit before atmospheric drag drops it into the sea. Success would mark the first in-orbit save of an aging observatory.

NASA's experimental X-59 completed flight tests aimed at producing a quiet "thump" instead of a sonic boom. The data could pave the way for lifting the long-standing U.S. ban on supersonic flight over land.

A new genetic study places turtles on the same evolutionary branch as crocodiles and birds, settling a debate that has flummoxed paleontologists for decades. The shelled reptiles, it turns out, are closer cousins to dinosaurs than to lizards.

The Memphis Grizzlies agreed to send two-time All-Star Ja Morant to the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray. The trade ends a turbulent stretch in Memphis and hands Portland a franchise guard at 26.

Viktor Hovland drained a birdie on the 18th in a playoff to beat Scottie Scheffler at the Travelers Championship, notching his first win of 2026. It was Scheffler's first playoff loss since reaching the world No. 1 ranking.

Robert Lewandowski signed with the Chicago Fire through 2028 after leaving Barcelona, bringing his career tally of 697 goals to MLS. The 37-year-old becomes the league's biggest signing since Lionel Messi.

British actress Penelope Keith, the star of "The Good Life" and "To the Manor Born," has died at 86. Tributes poured in from across the U.K. television industry, where she was hailed as a comic genius of the sitcom era.

Bill Maher accepted the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at a Sunday-night ceremony described as smaller and more candid than past years. Colleagues praised him as the "ultimate contrarian," a label he wore with visible pride.

The new Michael Jackson film became the highest-grossing biopic of all time, despite a chilly reception from critics. Fans, evidently, were the only audience that mattered.

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What it is: A federal law designed to end surprise medical billing has produced a lucrative side effect: some surgical assistants are earning more per hour than the doctors they assist, in a few cases as much as $22,000 for a single hour of work.

The detail: The law required insurers to cover out-of-network emergency and surgical services and set up an arbitration process to resolve payment disputes. Surgical assistants — non-physician roles that hand tools, hold retractors and close incisions — discovered they could stay out of network, bill huge sums, and let arbitrators split the difference. Because the law's arbitration formula leans on prior billed amounts, the more aggressively assistants charged, the higher their baseline became. In some reported cases, assistants billed several times more than the lead surgeon for the same operation, creating a reimbursement gap that few policymakers anticipated when the legislation was passed.

Why it matters: The original goal was to protect patients from being ambushed by five-figure bills after routine procedures, and on that front, it has largely worked. But the unintended consequence is a small group of providers reaping outsize gains funded by insurance premiums, which ultimately flow back to employers and patients. Surgeons, ironically, have not seen the same windfall. Critics argue the arbitration system has created incentives that reward pricing strategies rather than medical complexity or quality of care.

What to watch: Insurers are lobbying Congress to tweak the arbitration math, and several lawsuits are challenging the assistants' billing tactics directly. Any fix risks reopening the surprise-billing debate that took years to settle in the first place. Lawmakers will have to balance protecting patients from unexpected bills while preventing loopholes that can drive healthcare costs even higher.

- A newborn's body was discovered in a portable bathroom at Michigan's Electric Forest music festival, and investigators are now combing through tens of thousands of attendees for anyone who might remember anything.

- An Alabama man suffered a fatal heart attack while attempting to discard the body of the girlfriend he had just strangled, leaving police to find both bodies beside an abandoned vehicle in the woods.

- A JetBlue pilot reported striking a drone while landing at JFK, though a post-flight inspection found no damage and no apologetic hobbyist has yet stepped forward.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team