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Here’s what you need to know
The fight for access to mifepristone is heading to the US Supreme Court. An appeals court ruled in favor of restricting access to abortion pills, but the Biden administration is appealing the decision, sending it to the country’s highest court for review.
Paramount is holding on to BET. The company is no longer looking to sell its majority stake in the cable channel, despite interest from the likes of Tyler Perry and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Intel called off its $5.4 billion Tower deal. Its plans to acquire Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor fell through after both companies failed to get timely regulatory approvals from Chinese authorities.
United Auto Workers (UAW) is seeking strike authorization from its members. The union is upping the ante in its negotiations with Ford, GM, and Stellantis before their contract expires next month.
Coinbase won US regulatory approval to sell crypto futures. It’s the first time a crypto-native exchange—and the country’s largest at that—has been greenlit to sell such futures.
Target is over the rainbow
For the first time in six years, sales for the US retail giant Target are down. CEO Brian Cornell partially blamed declining sales on controversy over the company’s Pride Month merchandise.
Like with Bud Light, Target’s decision to disavow its veneer of LGBTQ advocacy reveals the company’s true priorities—the bottom line—which in turn might end up leading to less business from all sides.
Apple is hung up on hanging up
A new software update coming sometime next month may (or may not) move one of the most used buttons on iPhones: the red hang up button used to end calls.
Initially, Apple said it was going to move the icon to the right of where it is now, but that sent users into a tizzy. The iPhone maker is now considering keeping the button in the center, but moved up instead of hovering at the bottom by itself. So sort of back to normal… but not quite.
The US GDP is rounding up
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s running estimate of US economic growth is on the rise. The regional Fed branch’s real-time model for gross domestic product (GDP) moved up its third-quarter GDP prediction from 4% to nearly 6% in a matter of weeks. Quartz’s Nate DiCamillo explains why.
Quartz’s most popular
📈 A Vietnamese EV manufacturer is now worth more than Ford and GM
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🚓 Sam Bankman-Fried is headed to one of New York City’s most notorious prisons
🚗 Hyundai and Kia are recalling close to 92,000 cars in the US over fire risk
😶🌫️ A major Chinese trust firm missed payments, adding to Beijing’s financial concerns
👴🏼 Japan’s labor crunch is so acute that companies are hiring 70-year-olds
Surprising discoveries
Countries keep banning Barbie. Algeria pulled the movie from theaters even though it had been running for three weeks.
A California wine company illegally aged its juice in the ocean. Heartbreakingly, 2,000 bottles had to be destroyed.
Harrison Ford is now a snake. A newly discovered serpent species in Peru is one Indiana Jones definitely would have hated.
“Last Night” is coming for “Old Town Road.” Morgan Wallen’s song has been No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 weeks and counting.
A more helpful daily temperature check involves a wet cloth placed over a thermometer. “Wet bulb temperature” has been guiding the safety of military drills in hot, humid weather since the 1950s, and it’s gaining steam as a metric in this rapidly heating day and age as well.
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