After 322 days at sea, the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln returned to San Diego from a historic deployment that saw nearly 3,700 combat missions executed, 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched, 64 Iranian warships sunk, and 8 suicides attempted; the 122 fathers meeting children born during the deployment were among the first warfighters to disembark.1 2 In Australia, 100 cryogenic cylinders of cattle semen exploded in a fire at a breeding facility; and in France, a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off by a stun grenade deployed by police at a student-led protest, the French security forces’ crackdown on which drew condemnation from the foreign ministry of Iran, where a 25-year-old imprisoned on charges stemming from his involvement in a student-led protest was hanged hours after getting married in jail.3 4 5 6 Christa Pike was discharged from the hospital and sent back to prison after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital administered to her during a botched execution attempt, Texas prisoner Jamaal Howard was executed by lethal injection after his lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned the state’s governor to postpone the killing, and the Pentagon confirmed that the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed.7 8 9 10 In New York City, plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fired at least seven rounds at a vehicle carrying a Dominican immigrant and his 5-year-old son, striking the man in the neck; “The absolute worst of the worst,” said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin of the man shot, who remains in solitary confinement with a bullet lodged in his neck.11 12 13
A Palantir executive claimed that many AI researchers have begun smoking cigarettes “as a way of signaling to other researchers” that they believe AI is “going to cure cancer,” while Anthropic officials, following an incident in which a Claude agent submitted a fake tip to the Philadelphia Police Department about an unsolved homicide, announced plans to modify its training protocol “to reduce the likelihood of further misbehavior” and rolled out a new safety guardrail intended to prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward the company’s models; more benign displays of “frustration,” “pushback,” or “dark creative themes” will still be permitted, the company clarified.14 15 16 17 18 The prediction market Kalshi opened an investigation into at least three suspicious bets placed shortly before President Donald Trump’s pick for press secretary was announced, and the U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, resigned after leaked Signal messages appeared to show that she solicited a Trump donor to pay off her $100,000 American Express balance in exchange for political favors from her former fiancé’s father.19 20 21 An Israeli man convicted of swindling at least six Scandinavian women he met on Tinder out of at least 7 million pounds announced he is launching a dating app designed to protect women from online scammers, whose identity-verification features he was inspired to create after discovering a woman he matched with online was transgender.22 23 A woman in South Carolina filed a lawsuit against a funeral home she claims displayed a stranger dressed in her mother’s wig, scarf, and hat at her mother’s wake, and seven caskets dating from the late 19th century were discovered near the South Dakota governor’s residence.24 25
“I don’t know how to pronounce this, because it’s not normal,” the governor of Florida said of Hurricane Isaias, which claimed the lives of at least two Florida residents, “so I’m calling it Isaiah.”26 27 A man apprehended in Miami after attempting to smuggle 10 live birds into the United States in his underpants claimed the avians were intended for “personal use” before invoking his right to remain silent; a former biology professor in Minnesota confronting felony charges for allegedly urinating in trash cans, laboratory sinks, water bottles, faculty members’ decorations, and a student’s backpack claimed he did so because he “developed a habit”; and a libertarian activist arrested in Utah for driving an unregistered vehicle claimed he had done nothing wrong because his “inalienable right” to travel freely “comes from God.”28 29 30 In Ottumwa, Iowa, a pastor took the podium at a city council meeting to rebuke the “curse” cast by the previous speaker, who had opened the meeting with a satanic prayer.31 Residents of a village in Haryana, India, interrogated the police officers who had come to prevent a district council member from joining the Cockroach Janta Party protests after 130 million people were purged from the country’s voter rolls.32 33 The man who served as the mayor of Wuhan, China, during the initial COVID-19 outbreak was sentenced to 14 years in prison for accepting more than $9 million in bribes while in office; the mayor of Tirana, Albania, who is in jail awaiting trial on money-laundering and corruption charges, vowed to continue his work “from the cell” and promised the children of his city free school lunch in an AI-generated video posted to Instagram; and in Queropalca, Peru, mayoral candidate Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores defeated his opponent by 25 votes, securing a narrow victory for the center-left.34 35 36 37 —Charlotte Lokey
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