Eleven.
Eleven workers went to a paper mill in Longview, Washington, on Tuesday morning, and eleven did not come home. A 900,000-gallon chemical tank ruptured just after 7:15 a.m. The governor called it the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern state history.
The rest of the paper is not connected to that story, or to each other. A European spring that shattered temperature records a century old. A war trumpet from the Roman invasion of Britain, pulled intact from Norfolk soil after two thousand years. And a man from Cupertino, California, who smuggled the pages of a letter out of a Birmingham jail cell and helped write the most famous speech of the twentieth century, gone at 95.
Some mornings the paper has a thread. This morning it has a collection of things worth your time.
Eleven Workers Did Not Come Home
The tank held white liquor, a corrosive solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide used in the kraft pulping process to break down wood into fiber. It was roughly two-thirds full when it ruptured just before 7:15 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday, May 26. The implosion, not an explosion but a sudden inward collapse, released up to 570,000 gallons of the chemical across the facility. KOMO News
Two workers were confirmed dead by Wednesday. Nine others remain unrecovered. Recovery efforts have been slowed by the corrosive nature of the chemical, which makes the debris field dangerous to enter. Seven other workers suffered burns and smoke inhalation injuries, along with one firefighter. CBS News
Governor Bob Ferguson said at a Wednesday news conference: “We’re bracing ourselves for this being the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history.” The first victim was identified as Gilbert Bernal. GoFundMe campaigns and meal trains have begun for the families of the missing workers, most of whom lived in the Longview-Kelso area along the Columbia River. OPB
The chemical spill has reached the Columbia River. The extent of the contamination is still being assessed, but the presence of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide in a river system that supports salmon runs and supplies drinking water to downstream communities makes this an environmental crisis alongside the human one. Washington’s Department of Ecology has deployed monitoring teams. OPB
- Facility: Nippon Dynawave Packaging, Longview, WA
- Chemical: White liquor (sodium hydroxide + sodium sulfide)
- Tank capacity: 900,000 gallons (~two-thirds full)
- Dead: 2 confirmed, 9 unrecovered
- Injured: 7 workers + 1 firefighter
- Spill volume: Up to 570,000 gallons
- River impact: Columbia River contamination confirmed
Scrutiny is growing over the mill’s safety record. The facility, which produces bleached kraft paperboard, has operated under various owners for decades. Federal workplace safety investigations are underway. The Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries are coordinating the recovery and investigation. Seattle Times
In Brief
Ebola Crosses 1,200 Cases
The Bundibugyo-strain outbreak in DRC and Uganda has reached 1,205 cases and 264 deaths. An American aid worker tested positive in Bunia and was medevaced to Germany. The CDC’s 30-day travel ban on DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan remains in effect. No approved vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain. CDC
SK Hynix Passes $1 Trillion
The South Korean memory-chip maker surged 11% on Wednesday, crossing the $1 trillion mark for the first time. Shares are up roughly 250% this year, driven by demand for high-bandwidth memory chips in AI servers. South Korea now has two trillion-dollar companies. CNBC
Chile 6.9 Earthquake, No Injuries
A magnitude 6.9 quake struck the Atacama desert in northern Chile on Sunday. No injuries or serious damage were reported. No tsunami risk. The strongest aftershock measured 5.1. CP24
USMNT Names World Cup Squad
Coach Mauricio Pochettino unveiled the 26-man roster on Tuesday in New York. Pulisic, McKennie, and Adams headline. Thirteen of the 26 are World Cup debutants. The US opens against Paraguay in Los Angeles on June 11. US Soccer
Knicks Sweep to the Finals
New York swept the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals, extending their winning streak to 11 games. They await the winner of Thunder-Spurs (Game 5 was Tuesday). The Finals begin June 3 on ABC. First Knicks Finals appearance since 1999. NBA
Canada Finds OpenAI Violated Privacy Laws
Canada’s privacy regulator ruled that OpenAI violated the country’s privacy laws in how it collected and used personal data to train its models. The finding adds to a growing list of international regulatory actions against AI companies. Build Fast With AI
OpenAI Model Disproves Geometry Conjecture
An OpenAI model disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry on May 22, marking a notable milestone for AI-assisted mathematical research. The result has been verified by mathematicians. OpenAI
NASA Moon Base Phase 1 Contracts
Administrator Isaacman announced roughly $1 billion in contracts for sustained lunar presence. Blue Origin, Astrobotic, and Intuitive Machines will deliver landers before the end of 2026. Astrolab and Lunar Outpost received $219M and $220M respectively for rovers. Artemis III stacking begins this summer. NASA
Barney Frank, 1940-2026
Barney Frank, the longtime Massachusetts congressman who co-authored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and was among the first openly gay members of Congress, died May 19 at 86 of congestive heart failure. He served 32 years in the House. Legacy
Africa May Be Splitting Apart
Helium and carbon isotopes from hydrothermal fluids in Zambia’s Kafue Rift suggest early-stage continental rifting. The finding supports the existence of an emerging plate boundary that could, over geological time, split the continent. Published in Frontiers in Earth Science. Frontiers
The World
Spring Broke
On Monday, May 26, the temperature at Kew Gardens in London reached 35.1 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the highest temperature ever recorded in May in England. The previous record, 32.8 degrees, had stood since 1922 and was equaled in 1944. The new mark did not just break the record. It shattered it by more than two degrees, which in climate terms is not incremental. It is a different category. NPR
The day before, France recorded its hottest May day on record. Germany, Ireland, and Spain all reported temperatures well above seasonal norms. The heat dome, a high-pressure system that traps warm air and prevents it from dissipating, settled over western and central Europe late last week and has held position for days. Meteorologists have called it “mind-bogglingly crazy” for May, a month in which European temperatures typically hover in the low twenties Celsius. CNN
At least seven deaths have been directly or indirectly linked to the heat. Four teenagers drowned in lakes and reservoirs across the United Kingdom, where open-water swimming surges during unexpected heat. A 60-year-old man died in the sea off southwest England. Additional deaths were reported at amateur sporting events in France. The pattern is familiar from summer heatwaves but has never appeared this early in the year. PBS
The infrastructure dimension is the one that will outlast the heat dome itself. European cities are designed around assumptions about seasonal temperature ranges, and those assumptions are being tested. Railway tracks expand and buckle. Airport runways soften. Power grids strain under air conditioning loads they were not built to handle in spring. The question is not whether this will happen again but whether any of the systems between this heatwave and the next one will have been redesigned. Weather Network
Chile 6.9, No Damage
A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the Atacama desert in northern Chile on Sunday. No injuries, no damage, no tsunami risk. The strongest aftershock was 5.1.
Ebola: 1,205 Cases
The Bundibugyo-strain outbreak continues to expand in DRC and Uganda. An American aid worker was medevaced from Bunia to Germany. The CDC travel ban holds. No vaccine exists for this strain.
The Patient Will See You Now
A STAT report published Tuesday described a quiet experiment at Stanford Health Care: the hospital has begun convening patient panels to gather feedback on new AI tools before implementing them in clinical workflows. The panels are not advisory boards in the traditional sense, where the decision has already been made and the input is cosmetic. They are upstream of deployment. The AI tool does not go live until the patients who will be affected by it have weighed in on how it should work. STAT
The approach stands out because most health systems deploying AI are doing so through clinical validation and institutional review, processes that center the clinician and the administrator. The patient’s experience with AI, whether they know the AI read their scan, whether they trust the explanation, whether the output changes how they feel about the diagnosis, is typically treated as a downstream question. Stanford is pulling it upstream.
This is happening at a moment when the financial machinery behind healthcare AI is moving at a different speed entirely. Anthropic, whose Claude model is deployed across healthcare applications including radiology workflows, is closing its second $30 billion funding round of 2026 at a valuation exceeding $900 billion, according to Bloomberg. The round is co-led by Sequoia, Dragoneer, Altimeter, and Greenoaks. In February, Anthropic raised $30 billion at $380 billion. Three months later, the valuation has more than doubled. Bloomberg
The juxtaposition is the story. One institution is worth $900 billion because of what AI can do. Another institution, which happens to be the hospital where Paulo works, is asking whether the people on the receiving end of that capability are ready for it. Both impulses are reasonable. The gap between them is where healthcare AI actually lives right now.
KPMG deploys Claude to 276,000 employees globally via “Digital Gateway Powered by Claude,” integrating Cowork and Managed Agents across 138 countries on Microsoft Azure. One of the largest enterprise AI deployments to date. Anthropic
Anthropic doubles Claude Code limits for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, removing peak-hours throttling. Separately signed a deal for all compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center. Anthropic
OpenAI preparing confidential IPO filing with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, targeting a fall debut. CNBC
The Column
The carnyx is a bronze war trumpet from the Iron Age, and the sound it made has not been heard for two thousand years. It stood taller than the person playing it, held upright so the bell, shaped like an animal’s head with its mouth open, projected above the battle line. Roman writers described the noise as terrifying. Roman sculptors carved it into victory monuments. The instrument appears on the Gundestrup Cauldron, the most famous artifact of Celtic Europe, held by warriors in a procession that may be ritual or may be literal. Heritage Daily
In the summer of 2025, archaeologists from Pre-Construct Archaeology were conducting a routine excavation ahead of residential construction in West Norfolk, near Thetford, when they found a hoard buried in the first century AD. At its center was a near-complete bronze carnyx, along with fragments of a second. Only three carnyces are known from Britain. This one is among the most complete ever found anywhere in Europe. Historic England
Alongside the trumpets was the first boar’s-head flag standard ever found in Britain, made from sheet bronze. Boars were symbols of strength and ferocity in Celtic culture. Five shield bosses and an iron object of uncertain function completed the assemblage. The hoard was not a casual deposit. Someone buried these things deliberately, in a group, in a moment that must have felt like an ending. Euronews
West Norfolk is Iceni territory. The Iceni were the people of Boudicca, who led the last major revolt against Roman occupation in 60 or 61 AD, burning Colchester, London, and St Albans before the legions crushed her army somewhere in the Midlands. The dating of the hoard, first century AD, and its location in Iceni heartland have led archaeologists to consider a possible connection to the revolt, though no definitive link has been established. Ancient Origins
What is certain is the quality of the metalwork. The carnyx’s animal-head bell, likely a boar or horse, was cast in bronze with technical skill that places it among the finest surviving examples of La Tene art in Britain. La Tene is the broad term for the decorative style of Iron Age Europe, characterized by curving lines, stylized animal forms, and a visual vocabulary that is abstract without being purely geometric. The carnyx is both a weapon and a work of art, designed to be heard and to be seen.
Conservation specialists at Norfolk Museums Service are now stabilizing the objects. The discovery was featured on BBC’s Digging for Britain in January 2026. Detailed academic research will follow once conservation is complete. In the meantime, the objects sit in a lab in Norwich, the last sound they made still two millennia away. Art Newspaper
Clarence B. Jones
1931 – 2026. He smuggled the pages of a letter out of a jail cell, helped write the most famous speech of the twentieth century, and argued before the Supreme Court. He died at 95 in Cupertino, California.
Clarence Benjamin Jones served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal attorney, draft speechwriter, advisor, and trusted friend from 1960 until King’s assassination in 1968. In April 1963, when King was arrested during the Birmingham campaign and wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on newspaper margins and smuggled scraps of paper, it was Jones who carried those pages out of the cell and assembled them into the document that would become one of the foundational texts of the civil rights movement. CNN
Four months later, on August 28, 1963, Jones helped draft the opening passages of the “I Have a Dream” speech for the March on Washington. He was part of the legal team in New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court case that established the actual malice standard for defamation of public officials, one of the most consequential press freedom decisions in American law. In 1967, he contributed to King’s “Beyond Vietnam” address at Riverside Church in New York, the speech in which King broke publicly with the Johnson administration over the war. Deadline
After King’s death, Jones became the first African American partner at a major Wall Street investment banking firm. He later joined the faculty at Stanford, where he was a Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. His family said he passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, on May 22 in Cupertino. Washington Times