The Federal Reserve is making a difficult decision on interest rates today, and Google

finally introduces its own AI chatbot.

I'm Jeff Pierre, and this is the 7th from the Washington Post. It's Wednesday, March 22nd.

Let's get you caught up with today's seven stories.

First up, the Fed will decide whether to raise interest rates again today.

The nation's Central Bank has been hiking rates for a year now.

That's one of the only ways the Fed can bring down rising prices.

But it's becoming more complicated.

The rate hikes unintentionally led to the banking turmoil you've heard about in these past two weeks,

including the second largest bank failure in US history.

At the same time, inflation is still much higher than normal, which is a problem.

Experts say that you can expect another rate hike, though it's probably going to be a smaller one, but economists disagree about whether that's the right move.

Story number two, The US said it will send tanks to Ukraine sooner than expected.

Officials initially said it could take up to two years to send the powerful M1 Abrams tank to Ukraine.

But a new plan calls for refurbishing what the U.S. military already has available.

The tanks are now expected to get there by this fall. This

announcement came as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader

she Xinping held talks in Moscow, fueling fears that Beijing could give military aid to Russia.

At number three, another powerful storm slammed into California yesterday.

Damaging winds, heavy rains, and flooding rocked the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas. More than 200,000 customers lost power and at

least one person died. The same storm is dragging an atmospheric river towards southern California.

The forecast includes heavy rain, snow, and strong winds through today.

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