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Even after President Donald Trump ordered emergency pay for Transportation Security Administration agents to ease long security lines, major U.S. airports on Sunday were still urging travelers to arrive hours early — and federal immigration officers brought in to help may not be leaving anytime soon.

Trump’s executive order on Friday instructed the Department of Homeland Security to pay TSA officers immediately, though it’s unclear how quickly travelers will see an impact. The move comes during a busy travel stretch, with spring breaks underway and Passover and Easter approaching.

Tens of thousands of TSA employees have been working without pay since DHS funding lapsed on Valentine’s Day. The department’s shutdown reached 44 days on Sunday, eclipsing the record 43-day shutdown last fall that affected all of the federal government.

Trump deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to some airports a week ago to help with security as TSA callouts rose nationwide — the same officers who may now remain in place if TSA staffing strains continue.

When will ICE’s deployment at airports end?

Making the rounds on Sunday morning news shows, White House border czar Tom Homan said it depends on how many TSA employees would be returning to work after they start receiving their pay.

“ICE is there to help our brothers and sisters in TSA. We’ll be there as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Homan said it also depends on how many TSA agents “have actually quit and have no plan on coming back to work.”

Nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown started, according to DHS.

When will TSA officers get paid?

Homan, in his CNN interview, said he hopes TSA officers will be paid by Monday or Tuesday.

“It’s good news because these TSA officers are struggling,” Homan said. “They can’t feed their families or pay their rent.”

Also on Sunday, Charlotte Douglas International Airport said in a post on X that backpay could arrive for TSA agents beginning Monday.

“While this action provides critical relief, CLT supports long-term solutions to ensure continued stability for this essential workforce,” the airport said.

Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ TSA chapter, said Sunday that he has heard from workers worried they may not receive their full back pay because TSA management was given very short notice to begin processing payments. He also said TSA agents are concerned they could miss pay for time they were unable to work because they couldn’t afford to report for duty.

“It is a disaster in progress,” Jones said.

What’s the current situation on the ground?

Some of the busiest airports in the United States continued to ask travelers to arrive hours before their departure time in order to get through security lines.

Houston’s main airport, George Bush Intercontinental, warned Sunday evening that TSA wait times could reach four hours or longer. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport also told passengers to arrive at least four hours early for both domestic and international flights.

LaGuardia Airport posted an alert Sunday evening on its website that “TSA lines are currently longer than usual.” A separate advisory on its site said wait times “can change quickly.”

Baltimore-Washington International Airport said Sunday that “wait times have greatly subsided on this Spring Break Sunday.” But the airport still asked passengers to show up several hours early. Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans offered the same guidance on Sunday.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a post on X Saturday evening that more ICE agents were being deployed to BWI to assist at TSA security checkpoints to “speed up the clearance process for passengers — not immigration enforcement.”

How soon will this help with airport delays?

It’s hard to tell.

Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter called Gate Access, said the staffing crisis won’t improve significantly until officers are confident that they won’t be subjected to more skipped paychecks.

“It has to be an extended pay for them to come back or want to stay there,” he said, estimating longer lines could linger for another week or two.

Jones, the TSA union leader, offered a more optimistic outlook on Sunday, saying he’s hopeful that passengers could see wait times ease closer to typical levels once workers are able to afford basic expenses like gas to get to work.

TSA will also have to decide whether to reopen checkpoints or expedite service lanes they closed or consolidated at airports due to inadequate staffing, which led to passengers standing in screening lines that clogged check-in areas or showing up far too early for their flights.

A handful of airports have experienced daily TSA officer call-out rates of 40% or higher. Nationwide on Thursday, more than 11.8% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, the most so far, DHS said Friday.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Parts of Tehran lost electrical power after missile strikes on Sunday as Iran and its proxies lobbed attacks at US allies over the weekend and thousands more American military personnel moved into the region.

The arrival of a US amphibious assault group and the introduction of the Iran-backed Houthis to the conflict raised fears of a possible escalation of the war entering its second month, even as Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey met to find a path out.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said after the meeting with his counterparts that “both Iran and US have expressed their confidence in Pakistan” to host future talks, although neither side has indicated they are ready to meet.

There’s still little sign that Iran and the US will meet for peace talks soon, even though President Donald Trump has pushed for negotiations as US gas prices soar in a congressional election year. He delayed his deadline to April 6 for Tehran to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or have its power plants demolished. Iran rejected a 15-point proposal from Trump and insisted on war reparations and other demands Trump is unlikely to accept.

Electricity supply was cut in parts of Tehran, the capital of Iran, and nearby Alborz province after attacks on facilities in the area, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported Sunday. It was largely restored within an hour.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded Sunday that Iran’s Khondab heavy water production plant had sustained severe damage from a strike. Heavy water is used in nuclear power plants as well as for weapons-grade plutonium. One of the stated aims for the war is to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued remarks for the first time in about a week on Saturday, thanking Iraqi religious authorities for their support, according to state-run Hamshahri newspaper. Khamenei, who took over when his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed during the initial hours of the war, still hasn’t been seen in public since his appointment and the US says he’s injured, perhaps badly. 

The Houthis launched ballistic missiles at Israel on Saturday morning, following US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, including the Khondab plant. Tehran also struck aluminum producers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.  

The Washington Post reported that the US Defense Department was preparing for potentially weeks of ground operations in Iran, citing unidentified US officials. Any mission would likely first focus on opening the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which a fifth of seaborne global oil flowed before the war but which has now slowed to a trickle, inflicting the biggest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.

“Our men are waiting for American soldiers to enter on the ground,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. 

The strait has emerged as Iran’s main source of leverage in the war and Tehran is drafting a law to govern passage through the waterway. It will include sections related to shipping security, the collection of fees and the establishment of a “regional development and progress fund,” the semi-official Fars news agency cited lawmaker Alireza Salimi as saying on Sunday.

Read More: The Strait of Hormuz Energy Shock Is About to Head to the West

“What the Iranians are really doing is waging war on the world economy,” Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global, said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They’re trying to turn the Strait of Hormuz — an international waterway — into, basically, an Iranian canal that they can control and extract money from.”

Pakistan on Saturday said it had reached a deal with Tehran to allow 20 of its ships passage, while Bahrain on Sunday announced a ban on fishing and pleasure boats at night, citing the Iranian threat. Saudi Arabia has managed to reroute some of its oil around the strait, with its East-West pipeline now operating at its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The Houthis could complicate that — the Red Sea port of Yanbu, through which 5 million barrels of Saudi exports are now flowing, is well within their missile range. The group said it would continue operations until US-Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic and its proxy militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, cease.

In a sign of the conflict’s long reach, French anti-terrorism authorities are investigating a foiled bombing near the Bank of America Corp. headquarters in Paris that they said appeared to be linked to the Middle East conflict.

A strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on Friday that wounded at 15 US troops also damaged a US E-3 Sentry, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive military operations. Such aircraft, which cost roughly $300 million, are equipped with airborne warning and control system radar to help track drones and missiles. Unverified photos of the jet showed its tail completely severed, rendering it unflyable.

One person was killed in an Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, according to Israel’s emergency services. Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon continued over the weekend, with strikes killing two journalists on Saturday, according to Lebanon’s state-run NNA.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to widen the buffer zone in southern Lebanon, saying in a video posted to social media that he’s “determined” to restore security to residents in the north and wipe out Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The US military said in a social media post on Saturday that it had struck more than 11,000 targets and destroyed more than 150 Iranian vessels since the conflict began. The Israel Defense Forces said a wide-scale wave of strikes overnight targeting missile production and storage sites in Tehran had been completed.

The war has left over 4,500 people dead, according to governments and non-governmental agencies. Around three-quarters of fatalities have been in Iran, while more than 1,200 people have died in Lebanon. Dozens of people have been killed in Israel and Gulf Arab states, and 13 US troops have died.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Investors are looking past President Donald Trump’s attempts to talk oil prices down as reports signal an increasingly likelihood that U.S. ground troops will be deployed to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has arrived in the Middle East, and the 11th MEU is en route, while thousands of paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division are headed there too. Another 10,000 U.S. troops are reportedly under consideration for deployment as well.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 298 points, or 0.66%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.62%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.68%.

U.S. oil futures rose 2.4% to $101.99 a barrel, and Brent crude climbed 2% to $114.88. The national average gasoline price reached $3.98 a gallon on Sunday, up $1 over the past month, according to AAA.

The U.S. dollar was up 0.14% against the euro and flat against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell 1.2 basis point to 4.428%. Borrowing costs rose last week after a series of bond auctions drew weak demand as investors grew more concerned about fallout from the Iran war.

Over the weekend, sources told the Washington Post that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, though the White House said the plans don’t mean Trump has made a decision.

Rather than a full-scale invasion, any ground attacks may take the form of raids by a combination of special forces and conventional infantry, the report said.

Targets could include Kharg Island, which is the export hub for 90% of Iran’s oil, and coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Post.

While U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have devastated Iran’s military, Tehran has asserted itself as the de facto gatekeeper over the Strait of Hormuz by threatening drone attacks on ships. As a result, more countries are asking Iran for safe passage through the narrow waterway and even paying millions of dollars.

In addition, the Islamic Republic could wield even more control over global oil supplies as Houthi allies have now entered the war.

The Yemen-based rebels claimed a missile launch toward Israel early Saturday, raising fears that they could also target commercial ships in the Red Sea corridor, as they did during the Israel-Hamas war, disrupting traffic through the Suez Canal. 

With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed off and one-fifth of the world’s crude bottled up in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea has emerged as a vital alternate route for getting oil to global markets.

The Houthi attack comes just as Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is now pumping oil at its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day, sending crude to the Red Sea port of Yanbu and circumventing the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran war could drag on into next year

That was not the only sign that the Iran war is expanding. Ukraine is signing defense cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, offering its expertise in combating drones. That’s after reports said Russia is giving Iran targeting information and enhanced drones.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts aren’t showing much progress. Pakistan said the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt were holding talks in Islamabad—without the U.S. or Israel. But Iran’s parliament speaker said the talks are merely cover to give the U.S. time to deploy more troops. 

While Trump has insisted his Iran war will last up to six weeks, it could be more like six months or longer.

“The Middle East war now appears to be broadening and deepening,” Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan said in a note on Thursday. “We have 25% confidence that it’s concluded by the end of May, 45% that it’s settled in the fall of 2026, and 35% that it extends into 2027.”

Against the backdrop of the escalating war, high oil prices, and a worsening inflation outlook, a heavy slate of economic news is on the way.

On Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will speak, just weeks after the central bank kept rates steady, ahead of several other Fed officials due to make public appearances throughout the week.

On Tuesday, the S&P Case-Shiller home price index as well as the job openings and labor turnover report will come out.

On Wednesday, the ADP monthly payroll report, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, and retail sales data are due.

And on Friday, the market will be closed for Good Friday, but the Labor Department will release its jobs report, with Wall Street expecting payrolls to rebound to a gain of 45,000 after a surprise loss of 92,000.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Russia’s war on Ukraine began four years before the U.S.-Israel war on Iran did, but the battle lines are getting blurrier, while the conflicts threaten to draw in more participants.

The stakes are further elevated as President Donald Trump deploys thousands of U.S. troops to the Middle East for an anticipated ground assault meant to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“Over the last week, there have been a couple of interesting developments that effectively merged the Russia-Ukraine war and the Iran war into a single conflict,” University of Pittsburgh political science professor William Spaniel said on his YouTube channel this weekend.

He pointed to Ukraine signing a security agreement with Saudi Arabia that will provide the kingdom with expertise Kyiv has developed in defending against Iranian-designed drones supplied to Russia.

In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also made unannounced visits to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to reach similar agreements. That’s as the Persian Gulf states have been bombarded by Iranian missiles and drones, which are overwhelming their U.S. air-defense systems.

Spaniel, who studies war, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism, also cited reports that Russia is now providing Tehran with upgraded versions of Iran’s own Shahed drones. That deepens Moscow’s involvement in the Iran war after Western intelligence widely flagged evidence that Russia has been providing Iran with targeting information on U.S. assets in the region.

Sources told the Associated Press that Russia’s improvements on the Shahed drone include decoys meant to divert air defenses, jet engines, cameras, advanced anti-jammers, radio links, AI computing platforms, as well as Starlink capabilities that no longer work in Ukraine.

“We are still not at a true world war as there is no one actor fighting on two fronts simultaneously like the United States during World War II,” Spaniel added. “But it is further connecting the battlefield outcomes, and it will have longer-lasting implications for how the battle lines are divided.”

Russia’s shipments to Iran prompted Israel to attack the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea, which has emerged as a major channel for deliveries of ammunition, drones and other weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Israel hit warships, a port, a command center and a shipyard used to repair and maintain vessels, the report said. But Russia can still use land routes to arm Iran. Trucks carrying what Russia said was humanitarian aid went to Iran via Azerbaijan, and it’s possible they could contain drones, sources told the AP.

‘So these wars are very much interlinked’

Russian aid to Iran comes after the U.S. and NATO allies supplied Ukraine with weapons and intelligence, though reports saying U.S. and Israeli munition stockpiles may be running low have raised fears that supplies to Kyiv might be reduced.

Meanwhile, European leaders have rejected Trump’s demands that NATO take a more active role in the Iran war. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas instead pointed to the converging wars and argued that assistance on one front will help the other.

“So these wars are very much interlinked,” she told reporters this weekend. “So if America wants the war in the Middle East to stop—Iran to stop attacking them—they should also put the pressure on Russia so that they are not able to help them.”

Despite Europe’s reluctance to join the Iran war, allies are still mostly allowing the U.S. military to use European bases as staging areas for attacks on Iran.

European defense officials are also in advanced discussions to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz once the war ends, sources told the New York Times.

In addition, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has backed the Iran war and predicted the alliance would eventually come around to support it too.

“If Iran would have the nuclear capability, including, together with the missile capability, it will be a direct threat, a existential threat, to Israel, to the region, to Europe, to the stability in the world,” he told CBS News last week. “So the president doing this is crucial, and I’ve seen the polling, but I really hope the American people will be with him, because he is doing this to make the whole world safer.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Asia is getting wealthier, older—and potentially sicker, as rates of non-communicable disease rise across Southeast Asia. Yet governments aren’t investing enough in public health care, threatening to open up a massive funding gap.

“Asia has more diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular patients than anywhere else in the world,” Abrar Mir, co-founder and managing partner of Singapore-based health care private equity firm Quadria Capital, tells Fortune.

Asia’s health care market is expected to reach roughly $5 trillion in size by 2030 and contribute 40% of growth in the global health care sector, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group. Yet it currently accounts for just 20% of global health care spending, despite making up more than half of the world’s population. 

Southeast Asia is particularly at risk from rising rates of chronic disease. The World Health Organization estimates that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) claim 8.5 million lives annually in the region, driven by lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets. 

Countries are also aging faster than their level of development might suggest. Thailand, for example is quickly becoming an “ultra-aged” society: The country has more people aged over 60 than those under 15.

ASEAN governments aren’t keeping pace on public health spending, due to competing priorities like economic development and infrastructure. Southeast Asian governments allocate less than 4% of their GDP to healthcare, compared to 9% in OECD countries.

Mir argues that shortfall open up space for private capital, adding that 70% of hospital beds in Asia are funded by the private sector. “In this region, private capital is essential in building out social infrastructure,” he says. “If you don’t have it, many people would go without access to basic health care.”

Quadria, which has about $4.2 billion in assets under management, invests in health companies across Southeast Asia, including Indonesia’s Hermina Hospitals, Malaysia-based Straits Orthopaedics, and Vietnam’s mother-and-baby retailer Con Cung. The firm also partners with sovereign wealth funds, development finance institutions and impact investors, though Mir declined to cite specific names.

Health care innovation

Parts of Asia are quickly moving up the biopharma value chain. The region accounted for more than 85% of growth in innovative drug pipelines in 2024, led by China and South Korea, according to a report from McKinsey. That year, the region also generated almost two-thirds of the world’s biotech patent grants, more than five times what came out of Europe.

Southeast Asia, however, is further back on the value chain, and attracts global firms due to its low production costs, rather than an edge in health care innovation. “Over time, we think this will translate to innovation as it has in China, but in Southeast Asia, it isn’t there yet,” Mir says.

Regardless, Mir concludes that Asia’s health sector holds immense potential. “Today’s health care firms must have a clear strategy in Asia, or they will no longer be global leaders,” he says.

“We can do it better and cheaper.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Amazon has acquired Fauna Robotics, just under two months after the startup introduced a humanoid robot called Sprout designed to be a friendly addition to social spaces like homes and schools.

The e-commerce giant is already a robotics powerhouse, having boasted of deploying more than 1 million robots across its warehouse operations, but bringing the 3.5-foot-tall, rectangular-headed Sprout on board adds a robot that’s more about fun interactions than heavy lifting.

Fauna CEO Rob Cochran said on social media he was “incredibly excited to share that Fauna Robotics has officially joined the Amazon family” and said the New York-based firm will now “operate as Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Amazon said the company’s founders and employees will join Amazon in New York and will be looking for “new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.”

Fauna’s debut product, launched in January, is a software developer platform more than just a robot, sold to academic and corporate research laboratories that are exploring robotics in the home. Early customers included Disney.

The $50,000 Sprout can’t lift heavy objects, but it can dance the Twist or the Floss, grab a toy block or teddy bear, or hoist itself from a chair and take a stroll.

Amazon, which also makes the artificial intelligence assistant Alexa that’s already present in many homes, has had some challenges in recent years in expanding into consumer robotics.

Amazon called off its purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot in 2024 after facing regulatory hurdles in Europe and the United States.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com