Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

Good morning. We’re protecting a attainable prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia, and one other fee enhance by the Fed.

U.S. proposes a prisoner swap

The U.S. offered a prisoner swap to Russia: Viktor Bout, a infamous Russian arms seller, for Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. star, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated Wednesday that he would converse to Russia’s international minister, Sergey Lavrov, for the primary time since Russia invaded Ukraine a couple of “substantial proposal” to free Griner and Whelan. The U.S. State Division says the 2 have been wrongfully detained.

Blinken’s feedback got here the identical day that Griner, who has been detained in Russia on drug prices since February, testified in courtroom. She stated that she had been tossed into a bewildering legal system with little rationalization of what was occurring. Listed here are live updates.

The unusually massive interest-rate transfer comes even because the U.S. financial system begins to sluggish. Jerome Powell, the chair of the Fed, stated {that a} third “unusually” massive three-quarter-point fee might be coming in September. He harassed that he didn’t assume the U.S. is in a recession.

Nonetheless, Powell stated, “We’d like development to sluggish. We don’t need this to be larger than it must be, however in the end, if you concentrate on the medium to long run, value stability is what makes the entire financial system work.”

Response: His feedback appeased buyers. The S&P 500 inventory index ended the day up 2.6 p.c, and the Nasdaq Composite posted its finest day since April 2020.

Background: The Fed started elevating rates of interest from near-zero in March. After making a quarter-point transfer to start out, the central financial institution raised charges by half a degree in Could and by three-quarters of a degree in June, the biggest single step since 1994. Shopper costs climbed by 9.1 percent within the 12 months by June.

Rationalization: Right here’s how fee will increase act as America’s main tool for cooling down prices and what they imply for mortgages and credit cards.

Lufthansa cancels flights

Lufthansa Airways canceled virtually all its flights in and out of Frankfurt and Munich yesterday after round 3,000 staff walked off the job to protest for higher wages. Almost 130,000 vacationers have been stranded.

The protest was scheduled to finish at 6 a.m. this morning, however the wage struggle is prone to proceed. A union official stated that salaries have been “not excessive sufficient to account for inflation,” whereas Lufthansa outlined pay will increase that it had already provided.

This strike is simply the most recent journey interruption in Europe. Airport and different transport staff have been striking throughout the summer to demand higher staffing and pay.

And whilst worldwide Covid-related restrictions continue to wane, the pandemic has left deep scars across the travel industry: Airports and airways who let staff go in the course of the pandemic at the moment are struggling to fulfill a current surge in demand.

Airports: Heathrow, in London, and Schiphol, in Amsterdam, have each tried to restrict the variety of passengers in August. Heathrow’s announcement got here after photographs of luggage piled up on the airport circulated on social media.

Digital media is altering language — typically quickly. American Signal Language isn’t any exception.

Take a look at this video-filled story on how people who find themselves deaf or exhausting of listening to are responding to the unfold of smartphones and video.

Stay Lived: James Lovelock, a British ecologist, captured the scientific world’s creativeness along with his Gaia principle, which portrays the Earth as a residing creature. He died on Tuesday, his 103rd birthday.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The 12 months of Barbie

The colour of the season is pink. The inspiration: Barbie.

It began with the high-fashion world. Throughout Paris Style Week, Valentino debuted a pink assortment, and in Rome this month, Anne Hathaway attended his present in a hot-pink sequined costume. Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Kim Kardashian and different celebrities have additionally been noticed in pink.

The pattern, dubbed “Barbiecore,” can also be common amongst millennials and Gen Z. As the web site Who What Wear put it: “Sure, the dolls you performed with as a baby are main the sartorial cost proper now. Speak about a true nostalgic revival.”

Then there’s the live-action Barbie film that comes out subsequent 12 months, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken. Images of the actors rollerblading in extremely bright outfits have been exhausting to overlook on-line: “the social media dopamine hit of summer time,” as described by Vanessa Friedman, the style director and chief vogue critic for The Occasions.