5 Big News Stories Overnight - Saturday, June 6, 2026

U.K.: Bank dropped Churchill after being told he was ‘elitist’

The Telegraph reports:

The Bank of England axed historical figures such as Winston Churchill from banknotes after being told they were “elitist and divisive”, The Telegraph can reveal.

Research commissioned by the Bank concluded that figures such as Churchill, Alan Turing and Jane Austen were “contentious and not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity”.

Officials were advised to replace portraits with images of nature on banknotes because historical figures represented “a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy”.

Judge orders pretrial detention for ex-CIA official accused of stashing $40M in gold bars at home

Politico reports:

A former senior CIA official accused of stealing over $40 million worth of gold bars from the federal government and storing them in the basement of his Virginia home was ordered to remain jailed until his trial after a hearing Friday where a defense attorney accused prosecutors of smearing the official with “sensational,” irrelevant allegations.

The defendant, David J. Rush, has both the means and motive to flee while the case against him is pending, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ruled, citing Rush’s professional experience.

“He’s in a different position than most people to flee and avoid detection by law enforcement,” Fitzpatrick said.

Rush is charged with fraudulently claiming tens of thousands of dollars in compensation for military leave after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2015. He was arrested last month after investigators searched his home and seized more than 300 gold bars, roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and about 35 luxury watches, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

U.S.: Nasdaq Falls

Bloomberg reports:

The Nasdaq 100 plummeted about 5%, its deepest dive since April of last year, while a gauge of chipmakers fell twice as much Friday as Wall Street ended the weak on a decidedly sour note.

What might be eating at investors (despite the frenzy over SpaceX’s IPO) is a return of that unscratchable itch known as fear of over-valuation. Worries that a tech stock bubble may soon deflate combined with surprisingly big jobs numbers, and thus suspicions the Fed — even with a new chair courtesy of Donald Trump — could raise rates, triggered serious profit-taking.

PHOTO: Oren Elbaz, Unsplash
 

UK: Two men convicted of wounding journalist in London ‘on orders of Iran’

The Guardian reports:

Two men have been found guilty of involvement in a targeted knife attack on an Iranian journalist in London said to have been carried out on behalf of the regime in Tehran.

Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin, was working for Iran International, a Farsi-language dissident broadcaster, when he was stabbed in the leg outside his west London home in 2024.

On Friday, jurors found Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, guilty of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The Romanians, who denied the charges, will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on 3 July. A third man accused of involvement, David Andrei, was arrested in Romania but was not involved in the trial at Woolwich crown court in south-east London.

Hiring beat expectations with 172,000 new jobs; unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%

Wall Street Journal reports:

The U.S. labor market has climbed out of a rut.

The country added more jobs than expected in May, posting strong payroll gains for the third month in a row. Despite uncertainties around the Iran war, inflation, trade and artificial intelligence, the report suggests the U.S. labor market is steadily recovering from its weak patch last fall and winter.

The U.S. added a seasonally adjusted 172,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department said Friday, beating expectations. That was far better than the 80,000 jobs that analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see.

The unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 4.3% in May, in line with economists’ expectations.

“What we’re seeing here is the catch-up from last year where employers were on pause” due to trade policy uncertainties and federal-government cuts, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Employers have a better sense of the growth backdrop.”