Morning News.

Thanks to the folks at Morning Brew.

Wall Street to the rescue. The largest banks in the US gave a $30 billion infusion to First Republic Bank, the struggling regional lender that found itself in the blast radius of SVB. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and other financial giants each poured in at least $2.5 billion to shore up confidence in the US banking system during this precarious time. If you needed more proof these are precarious times: US banks borrowed $152.85 billion from a Fed lending program in the past week, topping the previous weekly high from the 2008 financial crisis. 

Inflation hits YouTube TV: Google raised the price of its YouTube TV subscription from $65 per month to $73—a 12% bump. The service, intended as a cable replacement, hasn’t experienced a price hike since June 2020. But, according to Google, “content costs have risen” since then. It didn’t specify what content costs more now, but YouTube TV did recently pony up a reported $2 billion for the rights to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package. Other streaming services from Apple, Disney, and HBO have raised prices recently.

 Microsoft vs. Google locked in workplace AI battle. Microsoft wants to make its Office suite great again by infusing it with the hottest tech around: the GPT-4 large language model. The company said it will include AI-powered assistants (“Copilots”) in apps such as Excel and PowerPoint to take busywork off your hands. That ai-nnouncement comes days after Google revealed it would bring generative AI features to Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Gmail.

 What do fans of The Cure have in common with Swifties? Both admire performers whose eyeliner is always on point and both are miffed at Ticketmaster.

What’d Ticketmaster do this time? When The Cure announced its latest tour, the band promised to keep ticket prices affordable. To which Ticketmaster, the behemoth that handles ticket sales for just about every live concert, responded “hold my $23 beer” and appeared to drive prices to the moon by tacking on lots of fees.

Angry Cureheads vented about the extra charges on social media. One fan tweeted a screenshot showing they bought four tickets for $80—but the fees amounted to another $92.10.

• The rate of maternal deaths in 2021 hit its highest level in 56 years, spiking 40% from 2020. For years, the US has been the most dangerous place to give birth among high-income countries.
• The US released footage of a Russian jet dumping fuel on and clipping its drone over the Black Sea.
• The prize pool for the Women’s World Cup this summer jumped 300% to more than $150 million. The men’s total prize money for 2022, by comparison, was $440 million.
• Cocaine production reached its highest point ever following a slump during the pandemic, per the UN.
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