Shares of IBM are sliding before the market open on Tuesday as the company provided preliminary second-quarter results that are below Wall Street’s expectations.

WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. inflation cooled last month as the cost of gas, clothes, and used cars fell, providing some relief to consumers, while underlying price pressures also cooled more than expected. Prices dropped 0.4% from May to June, the largest monthly drop in four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday.

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

TOKYO (AP) – Worries about a bubble in artificial intelligence investments are absurd, SoftBank Group’s CEO Masayoshi Son said Tuesday, deriding such doubts as backward and akin to questioning the use of cars and planes. “To ask whether AI is a bubble is a foolish question,” Son told executives at an annual company event in Tokyo.

HONG KONG (AP) – China’s economy slowed sharply to a 4.3% annualized pace of growth in the April-June quarter, the government said Wednesday, the weakest in over three years.

NEW YORK (AP) – The Writers Guild of America became the latest group to challenge Paramount’s $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, filing a lawsuit that seeks to block the merger on the grounds it would cause “specific harm” to movie and TV writers working across the U.S.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Billionaire Warren Buffett omitted Bill Gates ′ foundation from his annual donations this year after disclosures of the Microsoft co-founder’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He will donate about $6 billion to four foundations connected to his own family, but did not mention Gates in his announcement Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Five of the biggest U.S. banks reported record profits on Tuesday, boosted by their trading desks and a remarkably resilient American consumer amid persistent global economic uncertainty.