| Dear Evening Briefing readers: Our email domain is changing, which means the briefing will arrive in your mailbox from a different address, noreply@news.bloomberg.com. Please update your contacts to ensure you continue to receive it—see the bottom of this newsletter for details. Amazon projected profit that missed analysts’ estimates, suggesting the company is spending more than anticipated to catch up in the race to meet demand for artificial intelligence services. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has been cutting costs and focusing on profitability in Amazon’s main online retail business while spending heavily on AI services, which the company has said represent a “multibillion-dollar revenue run rate business.” But in recent weeks, investors have signaled growing impatience with tech companies’ efforts to profit from their massive investments in AI. Microsoft on Tuesday posted slowing growth in its Azure cloud-computing arm and said it expected to keep spending heavily on data centers. The next day Meta reported upbeat earnings that were expected to buy it time for its AI investments to pay off. And last week, Alphabet shares sank after it surprised Wall Street with sharply higher costs that overshadowed better-than-expected quarterly sales. —David E. Rovella Reddit is acquiring Memorable AI, a startup that uses generative AI to help marketers create better ads, in its first acquisition since going public in March. Reddit has been investing heavily in both its advertising business and AI tools. Memorable AI has built technology to help advertisers find the most effective text, images and videos to use in their sponsored messages. Reddit hopes the acquisition will improve the quality of ads on its service. The pandemic recovery has helped lift up a group of Americans who typically see the worst economic outcomes following crises: those without a college degree. Generous government support in the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak and intense competition for workers afterward helped boost wages and wealth for workers without a college education at a faster pace than for graduates. “This outcome is surprising on its face as recessions generally hit non-college families harder,” wrote economist Ernie Tedeschi. “The key factors that made the pandemic different for non-college workers are the nature of the shock itself and the magnitude of the policy response.”  Several years ago, Americans emerging from the early days of the pandemic found aisles at the country’s biggest retailers had begun to change. Stores had replenished their shelves, but with a catch: Many products were locked behind acrylic barriers. Once used sparingly to secure expensive or heavily regulated items, plastic shields were now holding hostage run-of-the-mill toiletries and cleaning supplies. The cause was a retailer- and media-driven freakout over waves of shoplifters supposedly scooping up everything in sight. The truth (of course) was decidedly less dramatic, but that hasn’t stopped stores from jailing your toothpaste and pretty much everything else. And the practice has now extended to big-box discounters and beauty retailers. The end result? Shopping in America is broken. As US Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to unveil her pick for a running mate, many eyes have focused on Arizona US Senator Mark Kelly and his straight-out-of Hollywood resume. A former astronaut and battle-tested fighter pilot, Kelly is the working-class son of two New Jersey police officers. If picked, he would measure a career as a Space Shuttle commander and Navy aviator who flew 39 combat missions in the Persian Gulf War against fellow Senator James David Vance of Ohio, a Yale Law School graduate and wealthy venture capitalist. Kelly’s presence on the ticket might also resurface questions about how Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump avoided service in the Vietnam War, as well as reporting on insults Trump allegedly leveled at former prisoner of war Senator John McCain and America’s war dead (Trump has denied the accounts). Kelly, meanwhile, only turned to politics after his wife, former US Representative Gabby Giffords, was grievously wounded in a 2011 mass shooting near Tucson. But even with such a swashbuckling CV, it turns out labor unions may not want Kelly to run.  Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Alex Beard, the billionaire former head of oil at Glencore, was charged with corruption by the UK’s top fraud agency alongside four other ex-employees from the commodities trader. Beard, 56, one of Glencore’s top executives for more than a decade before his departure in 2019, is the highest profile individual to be charged in a sweeping series of investigations into corruption and market manipulation at the company. He is one of the most senior commodity traders ever to be charged with wrongdoing. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office accused Beard of conspiring to make corrupt payments to benefit Glencore’s oil operations in West Africa. Eli Lilly said it expects its blockbuster weight-loss drug to officially come out of shortage in the US in the coming days, the company’s chief executive said, threatening the billion-dollar industry of copycat versions that has sprung up. Lilly’s drug, sold for weight loss as Zepbound, will cease to be in shortage “very soon,” CEO David Ricks said Thursday. “I think actually today or tomorrow we plan to exit that process.” The Biden administration unveiled the largest prisoner exchange since the depths of the Cold War, including the swap of an American reporter for a prized assassin sought by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin. The exchange, which took place on the airport tarmac in Ankara, Turkey, included two dozen people, 16 going to the West and eight being returned to Russia. Among them were American citizens as well as Russians convicted of crimes and imprisoned in the US, Germany, Poland, Norway and Slovenia. “Now, their brutal ordeal is over and they’re free,” US President Joe Biden said at a White House appearance with family members of some of those released. “The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship.”  US President Joe Biden, center, at the White House Thursday joined by relatives of some of those freed in a prisoner exchange with Russia. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg Spain’s Valencia region, one of Europe’s most popular beach destinations, is cracking down on short-term vacation rentals as officials nationwide grapple with growing anger over mass tourism. The regional government will fine homeowners as much as €600,000 ($647,000) for renting rooms for short-term vacations, Nuria Montes, Valencia’s head of tourism, said Thursday. The government will immediately alert platforms they need to take out these kind of rentals.  Tourist rentals in Valencia have surged 170% since 2015. Photographer: Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images Get the Bloomberg Evening Briefing: If you were forwarded this newsletter, sign up here to receive Bloomberg’s flagship briefing in your mailbox daily—along with our Weekend Reading edition on Saturdays. | 
