(Reuters) -Stubbornly hot U.S. inflation is fueling bets that the Federal Reserve will get more aggressive about trying to cool price pressures and even potentially ditch its own forward guidance by delivering a jumbo-sized interest rate hike in coming months. Fed policymakers had already all but promised half-point interest rate hikes at their meeting next week and again in late July, following May's half-point hike and the start of balance sheet reductions this month. On Friday, traders of futures tied to the Fed policy rate began pricing in an even bolder path after U.S. Labor Department data showed sharply higher food and record gas prices pushed the consumer price index (CPI) up 8.6% last month from a year earlier.

Major U.S. food suppliers and restaurants, including Kraft, Tyson and some McDonald’s franchisees, said they would continue to raise prices as they face starkly higher costs.

Big cities in California saw high-profile local races driven by voter concerns about public safety, while statewide primaries there and in six other states set the stage for November.

BEIJING (AP) — China is preparing to launch a new three-person mission to complete work on its permanent orbiting space station , the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday.

Scientists accidentally produced a group of rage-fuelled hamsters after a lab test went sensationally wrong. The gene-edited rodents began to chase, bite and pin each other down