"We need a bold, fierce, visionary, inclusive leader like Andrea Campbell," Pressley said. "The people deserve that. The moment demands that. And that is what the job requires."

Voters were thrown a late curveball when a third candidate, attorney Quentin Palfrey, dropped out last week and endorsed Campbell, joining Healey, Pressley and US Sen. Ed Markey in a race that has divided leading state progressives. (Palfrey was an active candidate when early voting began, and his name remained on the ballot.)

Liss-Riordan had the backing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and former acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey -- all three of whom featured prominently in her closing ad.

"Shannon Liss-Riordan is the progressive champion Massachusetts needs as our next attorney general," Warren said in announcing her endorsement late last month. "I know, firsthand, how Shannon fights back and wins against the corporations and special interests that take advantage of working families."

*

Campbell will face Republican attorney James McMahon, the losing 2018 nominee to Healey who ran unopposed Tuesday.

*

Automotive regulation has traditionally fallen to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, and Congress, which can push NHTSA to regulate specific things like driver-assist technology. But NHTSA and Congress have spent recent years swept away in the excitement and lobbying surrounding a more eye-catching technology — fully autonomous vehicles.

*

NHTSA has even exempted some robotaxis from its safety standards, and described many potential benefits of these technologies, including improved quality of life, safer roads, shorter commutes, lower energy usage and more access to jobs. It's claimed in the past that leaving "breathing room for innovation" led to the development of technologies like air bags. Self-driving cars and trucks could, in theory, revolutionize transportation and save millions of lives if crashes become rarer, as supporters of the technology have predicted.

*

"Job growth has slowed," Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, told me. "It's still robust."

She noted that the number of people quitting their jobs remains "elevated." That signals workers can still move from role to role — often in pursuit of higher wages — with ease. More than 4.2 million people quit in June, largely unchanged from the previous month.

Coming up: Attention now turns to the US jobs report for July, which arrives Friday morning. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expect to learn that 250,000 positions were added last month, down from 372,000 in June. In that case, the unemployment rate would hold steady at 3.6%, near its all-time low.

That's unlikely to convince Powell and the Fed that the job market is really facing enough pressure for them to ease up, and means another sharp interest rate hike in September is likely to remain on the table, Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, told me.

"The job market has a target on its back, and the Fed is not going to take its eye off of that target for quite some time," Hamrick said.

As of June, 98% of jobs lost during the pandemic had been recovered. Unemployment has remained at its historic lows in 2022, and the US economy has added 2.2 million jobs since January — nearly the fastest growth on record.

In May, there were about two open positions for every job seeker, along with historically low levels of layoffs. The economy is creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, and paychecks in June were also growing. That doesn't look like a normal recession.

Inflation & rate hikes

Reuters reported that this was a record profit for both companies — though neither mentioned that in their statement, as companies typically do when their earnings reach all-time highs.

*

Oil prices have started to fall recently, and gas prices are falling along with them. AAA puts the average gas price Friday at $4.26 a gallon. That's down 76 cents a gallon, or 15%, from the record of $5.02 a gallon reached on June 14.

Every time the Fed raises rates, it becomes more expensive to borrow. That means higher interest costs for mortgages, home equity lines of credit, credit cards, student debt and car loans. Business loans will also get pricier, for businesses large and small.

The most tangible way this is playing out is with mortgages, where rate hikes have already driven up rates and slowed down sales activity.

The rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.54% in the week ending July 21. That's up sharply from under 3% this time last year.

Higher mortgage rates make it harder to afford home prices that have skyrocketed during the pandemic. That weaker demand could cool off prices.

The median price for an existing home sold in June soared by 13.4% year-over-year to $416,000, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The plan is not yet written into law — at least 15 of the bloc's 27 member states, representing 65% of its total population, still need to approve the proposals.

Separately, the bloc will need to take a different vote on the Commission's proposal to enforce mandatory reduction targets.

Missing turbine

Meanwhile, a gas emergency is developing in Europe.

Gazprom, Russia's state energy company, said on Monday that it would shut down a gas turbine on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for repairs, cutting flows to 33 million cubic meters a day from Wednesday — or just 20% of its daily capacity. Gas had been flowing at 40% capacity after Russia slashed exports in response to Western sanctions.

Kadri Simson, European commissioner for energy, called the latest reduction "a politically motivated step" on Tuesday.

While bearing the brunt of frustration about the state of air travel, carriers are pinning the blame on airports and government officials. They say sluggish efforts to staff back up have led to workers shortages which are triggering long lines.

"They had one job to do and that was to make sure they have sufficient handlers and security staff," Neil Sorahan, Ryanair's chief financial officer said Monday in an interview. "They had the schedules months in advance."

Volkswagen's disruptive CEO is out of a job

As CEO of Volkswagen (VLKAF), Herbert Diess engineered a huge strategic shift: The 85-year-old German automaker would bet its future on electric vehicles.

Now, in a surprise move, Diess has reportedly been pushed out. In September, he'll be replaced by Oliver Blume, the head of the Porsche division.

Add to that a weakened currency — the pound has lost nearly 12% of its value against the US dollar since the start of this year — and the country can expect the costs of its imports to increase, while its exports could become more competitive on the global market.

"There's a lot more money going out than coming in," Maria Demertzis, interim director at Bruegel, an economics think tank, told CNN Business.

The UK has effectively dipped into its savings, Demertzis said, to help it absorb the shocks of the past few months. This is only a problem if it continues for much longer.

But global energy prices show little sign of cooling in the near term. Eye-watering wholesale natural gas costs have pushed up the annual energy bill for millions of UK households by 54% this year. Bills are expected to climb again in the fall to top £3,000 ($3,572), according to energy research firm Cornwall Insight.

*

While the government does not keep estimates of how many people trade cryptocurrencies, industry experts have suggested that the country may now have more than 20 million crypto investors.

The growth is driven by younger investors — mostly under the age of 35 — and many of them are coming from smaller cities and towns, founders of two of India's biggest crypto exchanges told CNN Business.

According to Sumit Gupta, CEO and co-founder of exchange CoinDCX, many Indian millennials have started "their investing journey with crypto."

While 20 years ago, their parents chose to invest in gold, these youngsters "are more interested in having bitcoin as part of their portfolio," Gupta told CNN Business, referring to the fact that traditionally Indians chose to park their money in gold or savings accounts.

*

These days Cadillac is really identified with a single product, the Escalade full-sized SUV, said Tyson Jominy, vice president for data analytics at J.D. Power. The Escalade is, by far, Cadillac's single best-selling product, and also the one with the most pop culture cachet.

While Cadillac has had many beautiful concept cars with rare and exotic materials in recent years, such as the Cadillac Sixteen with an enormous fuel-burning engine, and the Elmiraj with an interior featuring "handpicked fallen Brazilian Rosewood." The Celestiq is the first that will actually be put into production. It arrives shortly after the brand put into production its first electric vehicle, the Cadillac Lyriq. Cadillac will be among the first luxury brands to make the shift to being fully electric by 2030.

*

It's a bold move for the company which has repeatedly sought to re-identify itself for the past two decades. The first attempt was the Cadillac CTS, introduced in 2003, as the entry-level luxury American car to beat the BMW 3 Series. With its angular styling and crisp handling, it was a sharp departure from the comfortable cruising Cadillacs of past years. But the CTS reached its apex with just over 60,000 sold in 2005. Production ended in 2019. In most years, BMW sold around twice as many of the 3 Series.

Cadillac has made other attempts at re-invention, including a shift to alphanumeric names for its vehicles before going back to names again. There was also an attempt at creating an exclusive engine for the brand, dubbed the "Blackwing" V8, before ending production after just two years in 2020 with fewer than 1000 made.

One hour later, Hannity brought up the hearing repeatedly, but denounced the committee; blamed Democrats for security failures on Jan. 6; said Capitol Hill needs a "better perimeter" with fences and walls; condemned Dems for "violent rhetoric" in the past; said Congress should convene a committee about the summer of 2020's riots; and called the 1/6 committee "a one-sided political smear that does nothing to improve our lives." Later, his guest Mark Levin said "this is a rogue committee that is appointed by Nancy Pelosi to stop Donald Trump from running for president."

The bloc is racing to secure alternate gas supplies to avoid a potentially catastrophic shortage this winter. But a crisis could come sooner than expected depending on Russia's next move.

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that a complete shut off of Russia's gas could shrink GDP in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — countries particularly reliant on Moscow's exports — by as much as 6%.

"The point at which the crisis will bite more deeply is looking closer and closer as we head into the summer and then autumn, this is increasingly a matter of 'when' and not 'if' the crisis arrives," Vladimir Petrov, senior power analyst at Rystad Energy, said in a Monday note.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, described the situation in Europe as "perilous" and said it must prepare for a "long, hard winter."

"The core problem is we don't have enough money to run a robust cooling program," Wolfe said, noting that the importance of this hasn't "registered yet" in Congress.

Alice Gachuzo-Colin of Springdale, Arkansas, turned to a local nonprofit agency last month to ask for help paying her electric bill so her power wouldn't be shut off in the middle of the night. But she was told it had no available funds and to try again later.

So she had to drain nearly all her savings to pay the $256 bill. And for July, the tab is $314, which she has had to point out to her three children.

"Yesterday, there was a big, huge meltdown in my house because my kids were like 'I'm hot,' and I'm like 'Y'all, the light bill is 300 and something dollars,'" Gachuzo-Colin, 43, who works as a personal banker at a local bank, said in mid-July.

Typically, she pays $160 or $170 a month during the summer.

While Crystal hasn't used her ex's full name, legal experts say there could still be risks to this kind of posting, as underscored by the Depp-Heard defamation trial.

"Even when you speak literally true statements, the fact that a man can say, 'People are going to draw inferences about this ...,' it's incredibly chilling," said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami's School of Law.

The Depp-Heard verdict, Franks said, "really seems to be sending a message to women that they're just not allowed to speak about abuse anywhere, in any form — whether they name them or don't name them, whether they're specific or not specific, it doesn't matter."

Crystal, however, told CNN Business that she doesn't believe she has overstepped: "This is the beginning of the movement and I'm so happy I'm on the forefront."

The National Farmers' Federation has welcomed the increased biosecurity controls, but says the government should "continually review" the security settings and potentially subject all incoming travelers from high-risk areas to a biosecurity inspection.

"Every person should be at least questioned by a biosecurity officer, if not subject to an inspection," said Simson, the NFF President. "We need to also keep looking at shoe disinfecting stations as an option," she said.

"Whatever it takes. We don't want to look back and wish we'd done more."

Until potentially contaminated shoes are discarded or footbaths become mandatory, Schipp says the best defense is education. Advertising campaigns are being introduced in airports and on social media -- but Schipp said that doesn't mean telling tourists to stay away from cows.

CNN first reported Thursday evening that a Washington, DC, police officer in the motorcade with the Secret Service corroborated details to the committee that were related to the explosive House select committee public testimony earlier this month. At the same time, the Secret Service came under new scrutiny this week over the deletion of agency text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021. On Friday, the January 6 committee issued a subpoena to the Secret Service, asking for the text messages.

Residents in the neighborhood of Cité Soleil have been isolated by ongoing fighting between rival groups vying for control, according to the neighborhood's mayor Joël Janeus.

"The situation is critical and it's getting worse by day. My team and I counted 52 dead and 110 people injured. The gangs have been shooting for nearly a week now and they still have munitions," Janeus told CNN on Wednesday.

*

"I am calling for the government to intervene before more people die, thousands of people are trapped without food and water," Janeus said, adding that he himself is in hiding.

*

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a medical humanitarian group, had warned earlier in the week that lives were at risk due to the difficulty of delivering vital aid, including water, in an embattled area of Cité Soleil called Brooklyn.

"Along the only road into Brooklyn, we have encountered corpses that are decomposing or being burned," Mumuza Muhindo, MSF head of mission, in a press release.

While there may be creative possibilities for these AI systems, they share a key problem that pervades the AI industry at large: bias. They're all trained on data that includes wide swaths of the internet, which means the images they create can also lay bare a host of biases including gender, racial, and social stereotypes.

Such biases are evident even in Craiyon's fuzzy-looking images. And because anyone can type anything they want into it, it can be a disturbing window into how stereotypes can seep into AI. I recently gave Craiyon the prompt "a lawyer", for instance, and the results were all blurry images of what appeared to be men in black judge's robes. The prompt "a teacher," meanwhile, yielded only figures that appeared to be women, each in a button-down shirt.

Dayma is aware of this. A "Frequently asked questions" section on Craiyon's website mentions that the model's reliance on internet data may result in "images that contain harmful stereotypes," and that those behind Craiyon are working to document and analyze its biases. Dayma noted that many AI systems are biased, whether or not users are aware of it, and said he likes that everyone can observe Craiyon's biases directly in the images it makes.

He also said that he tried to prevent the model behind Craiyon from learning certain concepts to start with. However, it only took me a few minutes to come up with some explicit prompts that yielded images that are, to put it bluntly, not safe for work.

*

Asked whether he thinks its general availability could be a bad thing, given its obvious biases, he pointed out that the images it comes up with, while better-looking than in the past, are clearly not realistic.

"If I draw the Eiffel Tower on the moon, I hope nobody believes the Eiffel Tower is really on the moon," he said.