WORD ON THE STREET 

• Fed’s Fight Getting Results – Unexpected good news in the fight against inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was up by only 4% year-over-year in May. That’s the lowest level in about two years and slightly lower than experts were expecting. The bad news – the Fed’s target is 2%, so we are still twice as high.

• “They Should Never Have Done This” – President Donald Trump pled not guilty in response to charges of mishandling classified documents. He is the first former president ever charged by the Justice Department. The GOP frontrunner is portraying himself as a victim of political persecution. “The seal is broken by what they’ve done,” he said. “They should never have done this.”

• Biden Tries To Settle Labor Troubles In LA – It’s all very well to call yourself a pro-union president, but Joe Biden doesn’t want a strike at the Port of Los Angeles. The Administration is trying to cool labor tensions at the country’s most active port, which have already disrupted operations. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su is meeting with the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore Workers Union, trying to settle the dispute. The port claims it is operating “close to normal,” albeit at reduced capacity, at about 70%.

• More Weapons Heading To Ukraine – The Biden Administration has announced the 40th weapons deal for Ukraine. This will send about $325 million worth of weapons to Kyiv. “This security assistance package includes critical air defense capabilities, additional munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, artillery rounds, anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles, and other equipment essential to strengthening Ukraine’s forces on the battlefield,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

HOT SPOTS: What’s Going on in Geopolitics

• Italy Breaking With China – Italy was once an important part of China’s new infrastructure building program, but now Rome is breaking from Beijing. In the latest sign of increasing tensions, Italy urged China to end any support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. “As far as China is concerned, I believe that a country that submitted a number of points to build peace cannot and should not provide any kind of support to a country such as Russia that violated international law,” said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

• Putin Says Business As Usual – Russian president Vladimir Putin continues his uncertain approach to government as the war in Ukraine rages on. Despite characterizing the war as existential for Russia, he now says there is no needed for martial law, despite cross-border raids. “There is no reason to introduce some kind of special regime or martial law in the country,” he said.

• Russian General Killed In Ukraine’s Counteroffensive – Major-General Sergei Goryachev, Chief of Staff of Russia’s 35th Army, has been killed by Ukrainian forces. Fighting continues to rage in the Zaporizhia region, where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been trading control of villages on the frontline.

CUTTING EDGE: What‘s Happening In Tech

• YouTube Lowers Monetization Requirements – Tired of the 9-5 grind? Why not join the even more stressful and shallow “creator” market? If you are willing to subject your entire life to jerks on the Internet, YouTube has lowered the requirements for monetization under the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). You now simply need 500 subscribers, 3 public uploads in the last 90 days, and either 3,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days.

• Amazon Outage Takes Down Websites – Amazon Web Services experienced multiple error rates in the northern Virginia region, leading to errors for websites using AWS. A service called AWS Lambda, which lets customers run code, was blamed. Users couldn’t operate their sites while the problem continued, but Amazon claimed it had solved most of the issues after about two hours. Still, some website owners might have questions about reliability.

• AMD Tries To Retake Lead For NVDA On AI – AMD has a new chip out, the MI300X, which should be shipping to customers later this year. The “accelerator,” as AMD calls it, is designed to begin a fight with Nvidia (NVDA) over the AI market. “We think about the data center AI accelerator [market] growing from something like $30 billion this year, at over 50% compound annual growth rate, to over $150 billion in 2027,” said AMD CEO Lisa Su.

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