The Artemis II crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen — are on their way home after becoming the first humans to fly around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

They’re the first humans to see parts of the lunar far side with the naked eye. That’s worth stopping to appreciate.

The mission was a crewed flyby — no landing — but the point was to prove the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System could carry humans to lunar distance and back. By all accounts, it did.

Atlassian announced it is laying off approximately 10% of its global workforce — around 1,600 people — to redirect resources toward AI development and enterprise sales. The company estimates restructuring costs up to $236 million. It simultaneously replaced its CTO with two new AI-focused executives in the role.

This is now a recurring pattern in enterprise software. A company that built its reputation on collaborative tools announces it is dismantling some of its human workforce to build AI replacements for that workforce’s output. The framing is always “investment in the future.” The experience for the people being let go is something else.

Atlassian announced it’s laying off roughly 10% of its global workforce — about 1,600 people — to redirect resources toward AI development and enterprise sales. Restructuring costs are expected to reach up to $236 million.

The company also replaced its Chief Technology Officer with two new AI-focused CTOs. That’s not a succession. That’s a signal about where the org chart is being reorganized around.

Atlassian makes Jira, Confluence, and Trello — collaboration and project management tools embedded in tens of thousands of enterprise workflows. The play is presumably to layer AI agents into those products and charge more for the intelligence layer.

Colorado State University released its annual Atlantic hurricane forecast this week, projecting 13 named storms and 6 hurricanes for the 2026 season. The forecast arrives against an already elevated baseline: last month was the hottest March on record for the contiguous United States, by the widest margin ever recorded for any single month. A developing El Niño pattern could push temperatures further.

El Niño typically suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing wind shear — but when baseline sea surface temperatures are already this high, the suppression effect is partially offset. The models are working in territory with fewer historical analogs.

The global authority on threatened wildlife has declared the emperor penguin an endangered species. Climate change is the mechanism: as Antarctic sea ice shrinks, the stable platforms emperor penguins need for breeding and raising chicks disappear. The species is being squeezed by a warming trajectory it cannot adapt to at the pace the ice is retreating.

Emperor penguins are the largest penguin species and among the most recognizable animals on the planet — which makes the listing a symbolic moment as much as a conservation one. The species’ entire existence is organized around sea ice timing. They need it to arrive early enough and last long enough each year. As that window narrows, chick survival rates fall.

Republican Clay Fuller won Georgia’s 14th Congressional District special election, replacing Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned after breaking with Trump over Gaza, healthcare costs, and the Epstein files. Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard and former White House fellow, beat Democrat Shawn Harris to preserve the Republican House majority.

The headline is a Republican hold. The story is the margin.

Fuller won by fewer than 12 percentage points in a district Trump carried by 37 points in 2024. That’s a 25-point swing in a safe Republican seat. In a midterm environment where enthusiasm gaps and presidential approval typically dominate, that number is a flashing warning for Republicans heading into November.

Negotiations Under Fire: Israel’s Calculated Pressure on Hezbollah

From an Israeli perspective, what looks chaotic from the outside actually follows a familiar pattern shaped by years—really decades—of dealing with Hezbollah and its backers. When Benjamin Netanyahu signals readiness for direct negotiations with Lebanon while simultaneously authorizing expanded strikes in southern Beirut, it isn’t contradiction for its own sake. It’s leverage, built in real time, under fire.

Israel’s security doctrine has long rejected the idea that negotiations happen in a vacuum. Talks are not meant to pause pressure—they are meant to be shaped by it. The absence of a ceasefire is not an oversight; it’s the condition that makes negotiations meaningful from Jerusalem’s standpoint. Without sustained military pressure, Hezbollah has historically used lulls to regroup, rearm, and reposition. That cycle is well understood inside Israel, and frankly, there’s little appetite to repeat it again.

Vice President JD Vance was in Budapest this week, visiting Viktor Orbán’s government and fielding questions about the Iran situation from abroad.

On the drone incident in Iranian airspace — which Tehran cited as a ceasefire violation — Vance offered: “Ceasefires are always messy.”

He also reaffirmed the US position that Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium, and clarified that any ceasefire covering Lebanon was not part of the agreement. Which is a message that directly contradicts what Iran’s leadership has been saying publicly.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it plainly: “Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire.”

Iran and Hezbollah say otherwise. The UK’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper called Israel’s ongoing strikes “deeply damaging” and said Lebanon must be included or the whole region destabilizes. Israel launched its largest Hezbollah strike yet the same day the US-Iran truce was announced — hitting around 100 targets including weapons crossing points north and south of the Litani River, storage facilities, and command centers.

When Trump announced the US-Iran ceasefire Tuesday, Wall Street went full risk-on.

The Dow jumped 1,325 points — up 2.8% — to close at 47,909. The S&P 500 added 2.5%. Nasdaq popped 2.8%. The Russell 2000 gained 3%. Oil dropped below $95 a barrel. Somewhere, a trader bought a boat.

By Thursday, the mood had sobered. Oil climbed back toward $96-98. Asian markets were still green — Nikkei up 1.5%, Hang Seng up 1.1%, Kospi up 1.8% — but the euphoria had faded into cautious positioning ahead of the weekend talks in Pakistan.