USA

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. markets appear headed for a sharply lower open Thursday, one day after the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by three-quarters of a point and signaled more rate hikes were coming to fight inflation.

Central banks in Europe are following along, including a surprise rate hike Thursday in Switzerland, a nation that has left interest rates unchanged for years.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials tumbled 1.7% and futures for the S&P 500 skidded 2.1%.

European benchmarks and most Asian markets also fell, as did the price of oil.

(AP) --- Nevada Republican Jim Marchant insisted there hadn’t been a legitimate election in his state in more than a decade. All of Nevada’s election winners since 2006, he said on a recent podcast, were “installed by the deep-state cabal.”

But when Marchant won the Republican nomination for Nevada secretary of state this week, he immediately celebrated the victory as legitimate.

“I am beyond humbled by the overwhelming support of our campaign. Nevadans made their voices heard,” Marchant declared on social media.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation, now raging at a four-decade high and defying the Fed’s efforts so far to tame it.

Increasingly, it seems, doing so might require the one painful thing the Fed has sought to avoid: A recession.

A worse-than-expected inflation report for May — consumer prices rocketed up 8.6% from a year earlier, the biggest jump since 1981 — helped spur the Fed to raise its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of point Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 1/6 committee is set to plunge into Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to salvage the 2020 election by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral count — a highly unusual and potentially illegal strategy that was set in motion in the run-up to the U.S. Capitol riot.

With two live witnesses Thursday, the House panel intends to show how Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 15 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has termed renewable energy as “the peace plan of the 21st century”, as he underscored the need for abandoning the funding of fossil fuel funding.

The UN chief was speaking at the Sixth Austrian World Summit on the climate crisis, convened by the Austrian Government and former Governor of California and Hollywood actor turned climate activist, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Vienna.

LOS ANGELES, June 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A shooting in the southern California city of El Monte left two police officers and a suspect dead, authorities said late on Tuesday, adding that the officers were shot in the line of duty while responding to a report of a possible stabbing.

“The El Monte Police Department responded to a possible stabbing at the Siesta Inn and officers immediately took gunfire upon arrival,” police said in a statement.

“The city of El Monte is saddened and shocked by tonight’s tragic shooting that killed two of our own police officers.”

WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday backed Taiwan's assertion that the strait separating the island from China is an international waterway, a further rebuff to Beijing's claim to exercise sovereignty over the strategic passage.

The Taiwan Strait has been a frequent source of military tension since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the communists, who established the People's Republic of China.

WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - The European Union's top aviation safety regulator said on Tuesday that he is "very worried" about the safety of Western-made aircraft continuing to fly in Russia without access to spare parts and proper maintenance.

The European Union and the United States have moved to restrict Russia's access to spare parts following its invasion of Ukraine. Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation."

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - The White House is expected as soon as Wednesday to begin announcing around $1 billion worth of new weapons aid for Ukraine, including anti-ship rocket systems, artillery rockets, and rounds for howitzers, people familiar with the packages said.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The white gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket was charged Wednesday with federal hate crimes and could face the death penalty if convicted.