President Trump pulled the wraps off a refurbished Boeing 747-8i at Joint Base Andrews, a jet gifted by Qatar that will serve as an interim Air Force One while Boeing finishes the long-delayed VC-25B replacements. The aircraft, roughly double the size of the current plane, sports Trump's red, white, and dark-blue scheme, retiring the Kennedy-era light-blue design, and is slated to lead a July 4 flyover for America's 250th anniversary. "Our country has to be represented properly," Trump said.
Vice President JD Vance announced he expects to fly to Switzerland within days to join Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi due to arrive Sunday for negotiations following the 14-point memorandum signed June 18. "The United States has all the cards," Vance said, dismissing fears over the Strait of Hormuz. This marks a fresh push beyond the postponed round earlier in the week.
At its June 17 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee left its target rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range, with new Chair Kevin Warsh calling the panel "unanimous and unambiguous" on fighting inflation. Officials raised their 2026 inflation forecast to 3.6% headline and 3.3% core, driven largely by energy prices, and markets now price in a real chance of a rate hike rather than the cuts expected earlier this year. The labor market has stabilized, with private employers adding about 117,000 jobs a month through May.
Primm Valley Resort & Casino, the final operating resort in the once-bustling border town near Las Vegas, will shut its doors July 4, putting 344 people out of work. It's the last of three closures, following Whiskey Pete's in December 2024 and Buffalo Bill's scaling back in 2025, with the operator calling Primm "just not viable as a casino operation." The shutdown threatens to turn the town into Nevada's first true "gambling ghost town."
Despite this week's ceasefire framework, Hezbollah fired more than 50 projectiles at Israeli forces overnight, and the IDF responded by striking dozens of targets across Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley, with roughly 100 militants reported killed. Netanyahu instructed the military to respond forcefully to any further attacks. The flare-up tests a fragile truce that's central to the broader US-Iran deal.
US Central Command confirmed 55 merchant ships transited the Strait of Hormuz carrying more than 17 million barrels of oil in 24 hours, undercutting Iranian threats to choke off the waterway. "We're not seeing any evidence that the Iranians are still closing down the Strait," Vance said, while a senior defense official flatly told Fox News Iran "can't" do it because "the U.S. controls it." Trump also claimed a covert two-month operation sank 159 Iranian vessels.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in a June 19 article on "Ukraine, Europe and Global Security," warned that a direct NATO-Russia confrontation could rapidly escalate into nuclear strikes with catastrophic consequences. Notably, Politico-Europe canceled the piece at the last minute, prompting Moscow to publish it through its own channels. The warning lands as Britain, France, and Germany press five preconditions for a "just and lasting peace" in Ukraine.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope made the first direct detection of methane on an object from another star system, finding it on the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS along with unusually high carbon dioxide levels. Scientists think the methane was buried beneath the surface and only emerged once solar heating reached deeper icy layers as the comet swung past the Sun. 3I/ATLAS is only the third known visitor from beyond our solar system.
Researchers have built a tiny chip that can generate, steer, and read light-based information all in a single device, a major step toward ultra-fast, energy-efficient computing. The breakthrough lands amid a US government push of more than $2 billion into quantum initiatives, with companies racing to commercialize room-temperature photonic systems. Photonics promises to sidestep the heat and power limits that plague today's electronic processors.
In a story that's equal parts touching and deeply unusual, a permanent-makeup artist blended her beloved dog's cremated ashes into eyeliner ink and had it tattooed on as semipermanent eyeliner to keep her pet close. It's one of several offbeat tales rounding out the week, alongside an Australian designer's "LingeRAT" line featuring taxidermied rats sewn onto underwear. File it under: grief takes many forms.
