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Warsh takes helm at Fed; no rate hike

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh vowed to restore price stability following his first policy meeting since taking the helm of the U.S. central bank, after officials left interest rates unchanged and signaled growing support for rate hikes this year.

"Persistently high prices are a burden for the American people, but the recent past need not be prologue," Warsh said in his debut press conference as chairman. Officials "are unambiguous and unanimous. This committee will deliver price stability."

U.S. stocks ended lower on Wednesday, as the Dow dropped about 1%, the S&P 500 shed 1.2% and the Nasdaq slid about one-and-a-third percent. Meanwhile, oil prices edged up after President Donald Trump said the agreement with Tehran on the Iran war was not final and that the conflict could resume if he is unsatisfied.

Hitting pause on DNI pick

President Donald Trump on Wednesday complicated Senate Republican plans to quickly revive a key surveillance authority, delaying a scheduled confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton and pressing for the inclusion of a controversial voter ID measure.

Trump, in an early morning social media post, said he was "cancelling" the hearing for Clayton to become Director of National Intelligence, which was one of several moving parts in the push to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Trump at G7

President Donald Trump on Wednesday told a roomful of global leaders "I'm the boss," as he and other G7 heads acknowledged Ukraine's improved battlefield fortunes with a unified pledge of support and fresh sanctions against Russia.

Trump's comment - a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of an unspoken truth hanging over the June 15 to 17 summit of the Group of Seven Western powers in the French resort of Evian-les-Bains - followed a joint leaders' statement that could bolster Kyiv's growing leverage in potential peace talks with Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his allies came to the G7 hoping to convince Trump that Ukraine's fightback is delivering results, and that Russia is in no position to dictate terms for any peace deal.

The joint statement and comments from leaders suggest Trump has warmed to Zelenskiy's argument after years of skepticism.

Also Wednesday, Trump pointed to the U.S.-backed operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as evidence of what he described as the effectiveness of his administration's strategy of combining military force with economic leverage.

Nearly six months after the strongman's capture, Trump is increasingly portraying the operation as one of the defining victories of his foreign policy, arguing it transformed Venezuela from a hostile adversary into a strategic partner.

Tropical Storm Arthur

ORLANDO, Fla. - The National Hurricane Center on Wednesday forecast a system moving up the Texas coast could become the season's first tropical storm.

As of 11 a.m. advisory, the center of what is now named Potential Tropical Cyclone One was located about 40 miles east-southeast of Port O'Connor, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and moving northeast at 9 mph.

"[A]lthough the storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday (June 17) night near the Texas/Louisiana border, a high risk to lives and property exists through at least Thursday (June 18) from Texas to Mississippi," an AccuWeather forecaster said. "The flooding risk will continue well past landfall as the moisture from the storm slowly moves east across the Southeast U.S."

Offshore wind projects

LOS ANGELES - In yet another blow to the beleaguered offshore wind industry, the Trump administration said Wednesday it will pay developer Invenergy $765 million to walk away from four U.S. wind leases, including one off the coast of California, and invest instead in geothermal and fossil fuel projects.

Under the agreement, Chicago-based Invenergy will "voluntarily terminate" its lease off the coast of Morro Bay, as well as a lease in the New York Bight and two off the Gulf of Maine, and instead redirect the millions toward natural-gas-fired power plants in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri and geothermal power generation projects in the western U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

SpaceX sends satellites

A Texas-based satellite company had a much better day with SpaceX early Wednesday than it did the last time it tried to get a payload to space with Blue Origin.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched at 2:39 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 carrying three satellites for AST SpaceMobile, which were all deployed successfully in low-Earth orbit.

Mangione defense

Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a health insurance executive in Manhattan, plans to argue at his murder trial that he was undergoing an extreme mental health crisis at the time of the alleged killing, a judge revealed at a hearing on Wednesday.

The strategy poses steep legal hurdles but could lead to a jury convicting Mangione of the lesser crime of manslaughter, which carries significantly lighter sentences.

Mangione, who appeared in court in a dark suit and white shirt, is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a hotel in Midtown in December 2024. The brazen killing was widely condemned by public officials but became emblematic of Americans' frustration with rising healthcare costs and health insurance industry practices.

CO2 report

Taking carbon out of the atmosphere was never going to be easier than keeping it out of the skies, but the cleanup strategy is already hitting a wall, according to a new report on the state of carbon dioxide removal published in early June.

Removing carbon dioxide, in addition to rapid and deep emission cuts, will now both be necessary to limit human-generated climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius, wrote University of Maryland professor Matthew Gidden and a team of international researchers in "The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal 2026."

Public land fund

Congress is hopeful that the popularity of U.S. national parks and other public lands can translate into bipartisan support for a deferred maintenance fund whose reauthorization expired last year.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to reauthorize a fund providing $1.9 billion annually over the next five fiscal years to address deferred maintenance and repairs on public lands.

- Tribune News Service and Reuters