Inflation Has Cooled Significantly

The Consumer Price Index — the most widely used measure of inflation in the U.S. economy — climbed 3 percent in the year through June, according to new government data. That is sharply lower than the 9 percent rate at its peak a year ago, offering hope for both consumers and businesses that the recent era of inflated prices will soon be over.

“This was a really broad slowdown,” my colleague Jeanna Smialek told me. “We are finally seeing the kind of meaningful, real slowing in inflation that we’ve been waiting on for a really long time.”

Perhaps even more important than the headline number, Jeanna said, was the cooling of so-called core inflation, which strips out food and fuel prices. Economists were thrilled to see that it rose only 4.8 percent, which was less than expected.

The positive numbers come 16 months after the Federal Reserve began its aggressive campaign to tame prices by making it more expensive to borrow money. But Fed officials are likely to avoid declaring victory just yet, and they are expected to raise rates later this month.

However, if inflation continues to slow without a big increase in unemployment, America might be able to pull off a “soft landing” and avoid crashing into a recession.

Biden said NATO’s support for Ukraine ‘will not waver’

President Biden concluded the NATO summit with a speech that seemed to be preparing Americans and his NATO allies for a confrontation that could go on for years. He compared the war in Ukraine with the Cold War struggle for freedom in Europe, promising “we will not waver” no matter how long the war continues.

Biden cast the war as a sort of test of wills between Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, and the West. “After all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power,” Biden said. “He is making a bad bet.”

Also at the summit, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in his first public remarks since backing Sweden’s bid for admission into NATO, hinted that Sweden’s entrance may not be a done deal.

Chinese hackers breached government emails

Hackers linked to China targeted specific State Department email accounts in the weeks before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the country last month, U.S. officials said. It is so far unclear what the hackers, who went undetected for a month, had access to. But American officials insisted that no classified emails were breached.

The attack comes at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the countries. But the Biden administration, which has been seeking to improve the relationship, has an interest in downplaying the matter, my colleague Julian Barnes said. The intrusion revealed a potentially significant security gap in Microsoft’s cloud, where the U.S. government has been transferring data from internal servers.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline was halted

A federal court in Richmond, Va., ordered work to be halted on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is intended to carry natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia. The move came despite recent measures passed by Congress — with the backing of the influential senator Joe Manchin — to expedite the project and move its jurisdiction away from the Richmond court. The case could be headed for the Supreme Court.

More top news

Tom Cruise takes on another impossible mission

The spy Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) is the leader of a hush-hush American agency who performs a series of improbable stunts alongside a rotating roster of kick-ass women and loyal handymen to take down the bad guy.

If that story sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because it has been told six times. And now, 27 years into the franchise, “Mission: Impossible” is back in theaters today with its seventh entry. While “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” is short on real surprises, our critic writes, it has dependably showstopping stunts and just enough winking humor to keep the whole thing from sagging into self-seriousness.

The subversive work of Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was a Communist Party outcast who became a global literary star with mordant, sexually charged novels that captured the suffocating absurdity of life in the workers’ paradise of his native Czechoslovakia. His most famous book, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” became an instant success and was later adapted for the big screen. Kundera died yesterday at 94.

“His work cast a spell, and few did not submit,” my colleague Dwight Garner wrote in an appraisal of Kundera’s work. “In every college town, people were buying, reading and crushing on Kundera.”

A surfboard-stealing sea otter

The authorities in Santa Cruz, Calif., began an effort this week to apprehend a sea otter. The animal’s crime: years of accosting wave riders and seizing their surfboards, often damaging them in the process.

The otter — a 5-year-old female named Otter 841 — was raised at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to avoid making connections with humans. She was released into the wild, but she quickly lost her fear of humans and was soon spotted climbing aboard water craft and hanging 10 in the area. Over time, she’s become more bold: This past weekend, she was seen stealing surfboards on three occasions.

Have a tubular evening.

Thanks for reading. Sarah Hughes was our photo editor today. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Matthew

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