In partnership with

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how America added more jobs than expected in May, but ironically that send the stock market down because it bolstered expectations for the fed to raise interest rates this year to cool the economy. Good luck getting anything about that into 17 syllables, let alone making it… emotional. Still, I believe in you! Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now for God’s sake, man, can we hear about the news?

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Siri finally gets an AI upgrade, from Google

• USDA insists screwworm is nothing to worry about

• Israel and Iran cease counterstrikes

• Broadway breaks box office records

• Smile, Putin! You might be on spy camera…

• Poll of the day: Siri-ous upgr-AI-d

• Poll of the day: It’s a ‘no’ on the gold coins…

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 1.46% ) $DJI ( ▼ 0.57% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$AAPL ( ▼ 3.68% )  $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.21% )  

Siri finally gets an AI upgrade, from Google

Apple $AAPL ( ▼ 3.68% ) has finally admitted what we’ve known for a decade: Siri needed help. At its big developers’ conference yesterday, the firm proudly unveiled Siri’s big makeover, and surprise! They just shoved Google’s Gemini $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.21% ) under the hood to do the heavy lifting. Truly revolutionary innovation from Cupertino.

Now, Apple claims this new "Apple Intelligence" will make Siri vastly more capable and conversational. They are even giving Siri its own standalone app to try and compete with the big kids like ChatGPT and Claude. Plus, there's a new feature allowing you to automatically delete conversations after 30 days. Heaven forbid there's a paper trail of you asking Siri to turn off the living room lights four times before she actually does it.

Oh, and they are replacing the old Visual Intelligence with a new dedicated Siri mode in the Camera app that uses—you guessed it—Google Image Search to identify objects. So fire up your ancient iPhone 11, download iOS 27, and get ready to enjoy Google's AI with an Apple logo slapped on the top. The company’s stock was down in the afternoon after the announcements.

Quote of the Day

USDA insists screwworm is nothing to worry about

The USDA wants you to know that the flesh-eating parasite currently invading Texas is totally under control. Sure, the New World screwworm is a horrifying fly larva that literally feasts on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals like cattle, pets, and occasionally humans. But let's not overreact to the four confirmed cases, which now include a poor dog that traveled from Mexico.

According to University of Florida entomologist Edward Burgess, the parasite isn't necessarily spreading rapidly; we are just paying more attention. “When that first case is seen, everyone is being vigilant and their eyes are on it more intensely,” he told the AP. “And when you are looking for something, you are more likely to see it.” Ah, yes, the classic "you're only seeing the flesh-eating maggots because you're looking for them" defense!

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller isn't buying the calm approach. He pointed out that "if the larvae fell out all along the ground where that dog went, it’s going to spread screwworm all over…”

But don't panic. The government's master plan is simply to build a massive factory, breed sterile male flies, and drop swarms of them from airplanes to romance the wild females into extinction. What could possibly go wrong? The previous successful prevention program which did just that was cut in early 2025 by Elon Musk’s DOGE program, incidentally. 🤷

Israel and Iran cease counterstrikes

Israel and Iran have graciously decided to stop bombing each other, just in time to avoid ruining Donald Trump's master plan to extend a U.S. ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

After a weekend of lobbing missiles back and forth, the adults in the room have spoken. Trump took to Truth Social to declare that both sides "must immediately stop shooting." And just to ensure everyone knows who the real boss is, he humbly reminded the Financial Times that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "won’t have any choice" but to accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal. "I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots," Trump said.

Netanyahu proudly announced, "At the moment, the fire on this front has ceased, because after we struck the terror regime in Tehran, it stopped attacking us." Meanwhile, not to be outdone in the poetry department, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian hopped on X to declare that, "Diplomacy and defence are the two wings of national power." 

It’s all very beautiful, this news, isn’t it? Just picturesque, really.

Song of the Day: Paul McCartney, ‘Momma Gets By’

The former Beatle has a new album out, and I rather like this wistful number from it.

Broadway breaks box office records

In a world currently full of regional wars, political chaos, and, yes, flesh-eating screwworms, people seem to want to escape reality for some reason. Tourists and locals are throwing cash at Manhattan’s theater district, pushing Broadway attendance to an impressive 14.66 million and generating a record-shattering $1.89 billion in ticket sales last season.

Audiences are happily shelling out an average of $129 per ticket, with premium seats skyrocketing up to $1,500, just to watch familiar spectacles like The Lion King or to gaze upon Hollywood royalty like Daniel Radcliffe and George Clooney.

But underneath the glittering facade, the industry is actually bleeding cash. Thanks to enormous operating costs, running a major musical now requires between $650,000 and $800,000 every week. Because of this, of the 18 commercial musicals that opened last season, exactly zero have made their money back.

Even theater legends are panicking over this broken economic model. As iconic composer Andrew Lloyd Webber bluntly said, "Broadway is not a business anymore.” He added, “The statistics are terrible. I am very worried. I look at the economics of this, and I just don’t see how it can sustain.”

So much for a fairy-tale ending!

Smile, Putin! You might be on spy camera…

Authoritarian regimes absolutely love security cameras. What could be better than tracking your citizens' every move? Oops! It turns out that building a massive surveillance network to spy on your own people might just wildly backfire.

After Israeli intelligence used AI to parse through Tehran’s traffic cams and help assassinate top Iranian officials, Vladimir Putin reportedly had a bit of a panic attack.

Russian security services had to frantically unplug parts of Putin’s personal surveillance system just to "hermetically seal" it off from the internet. Even FSB director Alexander Bortnikov had to admit that their beloved tool of domestic oppression is now a massive vulnerability for the regime, because theoretically, anyone could use AI to figure out, using CCTV, where Putin is.

This new AI tech is being hailed as the "holy grail of surveillance." Instead of fast-forwarding through tapes, spies can now just type natural language prompts, like searching for “two men handing a bag to each other,” to instantly comb through millions of hours of video.

So, all those billions spent on CCTV? They’ve accidentally created a giant, high-definition keyhole for foreign adversaries to track their every move. Ironic.

Not as ironic as murdering the leader of your opposition using frog poison, of course. But I hope you’re taking notes, Vlad. It’s like rain on your wedding day. 🎶

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

Nope. I mean, it went up a bit yesterday, but it dropped a LOT on Friday. Let’s give it a week or two to level out, yeah?

Poll of the day: Siri-ous upgr-AI-d

Poll of the day: It’s a ‘no’ on the gold coins…

We asked: How do you feel about the plans for a 24-karat gold coin celebrating the country's 250th birthday?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As lawmakers perfectly noted, the design is undeniably "more befitting a monarchy than a democracy" (419)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ What better way to celebrate America's 250th birthday than by minting a coin with gold potentially sourced from Colombian mines controlled by drug cartels? (102)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Hey, what's a little illegality when celebrating our grand democratic experiment? (29)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm thrilled. I completely agree with U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach that "there is no profile more emblematic" for our 250th birthday. (26)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's a fantastic idea with a rich history of success! The last time we put a living president on a commemorative coin was Calvin Coolidge in 1926 for the nation's 150th anniversary. That went over so incredibly well that most of those coins were melted. (90)
666 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Need2Know is covered by Cheddar’s Terms of Service

P.S. So, you remember the cheese puns that used to open this newsletter? Suffice to say, they were divisive. Now, thanks to a thing called “dynamic content options,” I can offer you the option to see cheese puns again, if you’re one of the thousands who got in touch bemoaning their departure six months ago. All you need to do is answer “true” on this survey, and submit it. If you never want to see cheese puns in this newsletter again, don’t click that link, don’t fill out the survey, don’t submit it. Just keep reading and pretend this conversation never happened. Mmmkay? Thank you.