Why couldn’t this have been announced on 4/20? Talk about a wasted opportunity. The Justice Department moved Thursday to reclassify cannabis as a Schedule III drug, a major federal shift recognizing its medicinal use. Officials said would allow for more research and treatment options.

It will make things easier for the $47 billion industry to operate. Marijuana won’t become legal at the federal level when it’s reclassified, but the new change will ease restrictions from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. And Reuters reports that it’s likely to reshape the American weed landscape, which has faced continued barriers at the federal level, even as all but two U.S. states have legalized it in some form for medical use and nearly half have legalized it for recreational use as well.

Marijuana advocates have long argued that federal drug laws are too restrictive with cannabis, an argument that has gained traction among federal and state officials. The Biden administration began the regulatory process to loosen restrictions on marijuana, but that effort was hampered by delays inside the D.E.A.

Last December, President Trump signed an executive order instructing the Justice Department to redouble efforts to change the classification of marijuana, removing it from the list of addictive drugs with no medical purpose, like heroin, and placing it instead among less addictive drugs that have medical uses.

Among health experts, the jury is still out on THC, CBD and the use of marijuana in general, as those in medical and research fields weigh the benefits and risks. “This is the big challenge: How do we facilitate the beneficial medical applications, allow for what society has determined is acceptable recreational use and also guard against the very real harms?" Gregory Tung, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, told USA TODAY. “This is difficult and will likely require a mix of policy, rules, regulations and education.”

The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by another three weeks, President Trump said after hosting the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in the Oval Office on Thursday. The U.S. wants to extend the Lebanon ceasefire for two reasons: to advance direct Israel-Lebanon peace talks and to prevent renewed fighting from undermining the effort to reach a deal with Iran.

However, Trump claims he won’t rush a peace agreement with Iran and has ordered the U.S. military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the strait of Hormuz and claimed that US minesweepers “are clearing the strait right now” amid the standoff over the key waterway. U.S. special forces also boarded a stateless oil tanker in the Indian Ocean which the Pentagon claimed was carrying Iranian crude oil, ratcheting up the standoff with Tehran over the strait.

Trump said the military had “hit about 75% of our targets” in Iran and that a deal had not yet been reached because Iran’s leadership was “in turmoil”. But Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said there were no “hardliners” or “moderates” in Iran, responding to the Trump claim of internal division in Iran’s leadership.

After some initial leaks last week, OpenAI’s latest AI model, GPT-5.5, codenamed “Spud,” was officially unveiled on Thursday, offering a glimpse into the next phase of artificial intelligence. It dropped just one week after competitor Anthropic launched its latest model.

Why is this important? Well, AI releases are getting faster, more efficient and more powerful. “This is a new class of intelligence—a big step towards more agentic and intuitive computing,” OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman told reporters. GPT-5.5 is a “faster, sharper thinker for fewer tokens” compared to 5.4, he added, and can handle multi-step workflows more autonomously with less user input.

Despite the jump in capability, OpenAI says GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4’s response speed in real-world use. But early benchmarks reveal its ability to outperform competitors like Opus 4.7 and Gemini 3.1, particularly in more demanding applications.