Story cards stay below the sticky dock while audio, chapters, date, and brief navigation remain accessible.
President Trump announced Saturday he is nominating Lance Schroyer, a 29-year Oklahoma state trooper and current senior advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, to be director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency has gone without a Senate-confirmed chief since early 2017, relying on a string of acting directors. Trump and Mullin urged Congress to confirm him quickly.
Pump prices are sitting right around the $4 mark amid the Strait of Hormuz reopening, summer driving demand, and renewed Middle East tension. Brent crude swung hard Friday — up as much as 4 percent before sliding back about 2 percent to the mid-$73 range — as fresh strikes rattled traders. Stocks have stayed near record highs, though analysts warn the market may be pricing in too much optimism for a fragile 60-day truce.
Gov. Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency and restricted fireworks through July 5 as the Cottonwood Fire ballooned past 112 square miles at zero percent containment, the largest active wildfire in the country. The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued a "Particularly Dangerous Situation" warning for five counties for the first time in the office's history, with 94 percent of the state in severe or extreme drought. The fire has already damaged the Eagle Point ski resort and forced evacuations.
The standoff over the SAVE America Act is dragging into the weekend, with Trump refusing to sign a bipartisan housing-affordability bill until Congress passes the election overhaul requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote. The measure lacks the 60 Senate votes to beat a filibuster, and Majority Leader John Thune has signaled there isn't the appetite to nuke it. Speaker Mike Johnson is now eyeing a third reconciliation bill to push it through.
The US carried out additional strikes on Iranian missile, drone, and coastal radar sites Saturday after the Panama-flagged crude tanker Kiku, carrying Qatari oil, was struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz. Bahrain's Foreign Ministry said it was targeted by a number of Iranian drones in what it called a blatant violation of its sovereignty, while a senior Iranian official vowed a "swift and decisive" response. Vice President JD Vance warned that "violence will be met with violence."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed as "a historic achievement" pointing toward an eventual peace deal. Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem promptly called the framework "null" and a "humiliation," saying any attempt to tie Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the group's disarmament crosses "red lines." Experts warn Iran will work to sabotage the deal.
The death toll from the Venezuela earthquake has risen to at least 920, with US search-and-rescue teams racing against the critical survival window to pull people from the rubble. Crews are fighting collapsed structures and limited access as the count is expected to climb. International aid is flowing in as the operation shifts from rescue toward recovery in the hardest-hit zones.
NASA's Swift Boost mission is set to launch June 27 in a first-of-its-kind, $30 million attempt to save the nearly 22-year-old Swift observatory, which is being dragged down by an expanded atmosphere with uncontrolled reentry feared by year's end. A refrigerator-sized rescue craft called Link, built by Katalyst Space Technologies with three ion engines and three robotic arms, will dock with the propulsion-less Swift. If it works, it will slowly boost Swift to roughly 370 miles, buying at least five more years of science.
Researchers at Kyushu University built a solid-state material that converts visible sunlight into higher-energy ultraviolet light at sunlight intensity, a long-frustrating challenge published this week in Nature Communications. Using a process called triplet-triplet annihilation and a modified organic semiconductor, they hit a quantum yield above 60 percent in the solid state. The breakthrough could power cleaner air purification, solar-driven chemistry, 3D printing, and industrial curing.
A small Sunward SA 60L Aurora aircraft crashed into the 108-story CITIC Tower in Beijing's business district, punching a gaping hole in the building and raining debris onto the street below before plummeting to the ground. The lone pilot was killed and 13 people were injured in the building and on the street; Chinese authorities imposed a swift information blackout. Early reports suggest the plane veered off its planned path with its transponder switched off just before impact.
