• Meta launches is Twitter rival, Threads.
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visits China.
• JetBlue walks away from a key partnership.

Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:

1. Managing expectations

The three major U.S. stock indices closed lower Wednesday, snapping a three-day winning streak, as investors chewed over the minutes from last month's Federal Reserve meeting. As expected, the Fed minutes reflected policy makers' desire to resume hiking rates after June's pause as Chairman Jerome Powell aims to get the annual inflation rate down to the central bank's target of 2%. Thursday's data slate includes ADP private payrolls for June and weekly jobless claims, a warmup for Friday's monthly jobs report. Follow live market updates.

2. Zuck's new Threads

Meta's Twitter alternative is here. CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Threads social media platform Wednesday night. Similar to Twitter, Threads is a "text-based conversation app" that falls under Meta's Instagram brand but nonetheless requires a separate download. Zuckerberg said the new service scored more than 5 million signups with its first four hours. Threads' debut comes as Twitter bleeds users after a series of dramatic changes implemented by owner Elon Musk. BlueSky, a platform backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, recently reported record-high traffic after Musk imposed rate limits on his app, resulting in error messages for several users.

3. Yellen arrives in China

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is the latest high-ranking Biden administration official to visit Beijing in a bid to ease tensions between the U.S. and China. She arrived Thursday for what is planned to be a four-day trip, a couple weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China. While the governments of both countries have played hardball over trade and tech, there are also concerns about China's intentions for Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own. But the U.S. doesn't want to de-couple its economic interests from China's. "A full cessation of trade and investment would be destabilizing for both of our countries and the global economy," a Biden administration official said earlier this week.

4. That's the Spirit

JetBlue is walking away from its northeastern U.S. partnership with American Airlines in order to focus on closing its deal to buy low-cost carrier Spirit. The move comes after a federal judge in May ruled in favor of the Justice Department, which had sued to dissolve the JetBlue-American alliance. American said it still planned to challenge the ruling, although a spokesman didn't explain how the airline would salvage the agreement if JetBlue unwinds it as planned on July 29. JetBlue will now turn its attention to another legal fight with the Justice Department, which sued to block the Spirit deal in March over competition concerns.

5. Where's Prigozhin?

Just last week, Belarus' president, Alexander Lukashenko, said the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was in his country after the organization's failed rebellion in Russia. Prigozhin had accepted exile as a consequence, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin nonetheless still vowed to bring the mutiny's organizers to justice. Now, Lukashenko says Prigozhin is in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, adding more intrigue to an already murky situation as Russia also continues its war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, NBC News reports that former U.S. officials have held secret talks with prominent Russians in an attempt to lay groundwork to end the fight. Follow live war updates.

– CNBC's Samantha Subin, Jeff Cox, Jonathan Vanian, Clement Tan, Leslie Josephs and Elliot Smith contributed to this report.

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