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Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook commended Chinese developers and the company’s partners in the country, days after the ruling party’s flagship newspaper criticized the iPhone maker for monopolistic policies.

Cook, speaking at the China Development Forum in Beijing on Sunday, praised the innovations of Chinese developers and the automation at the country’s manufacturing facilities. He said Apple and China share common goals, including in green development and carbon neutrality.

Apple lowered the fees it collects from app developers in the country earlier this month, a major concession in a hugely lucrative market where the company faced the risk of antitrust intervention by local regulators. Yet after the announcement, the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper called for a further easing of App Store restrictions and urged the firm to fix “monopolistic” practices — highlighting how Apple may continue to face pressure from Beijing.

“Innovation, green development and education are not separate properties — they are deeply connected,” Cook said. “They represent the vision of progress that we at Apple share, and we are committed to collaborating with our partners across China and with all of you to make that vision a reality.”

An “excellently talented developer community” helps to increase prosperity and opportunity across China, and innovation is transforming its manufacturing sector, Cook said. While the US tech giant builds most of its devices in China, it has diversified its assembly to regions such as Vietnam and India.

“There is a Chinese proverb I love — ‘a single tree does not make a forest,’” Cook said. “Together, I believe we can plant that forest.”

Read More: Apple CEO Visits China Amid Growing Pressure on App Store Policy

Apple has seen its sales growth in China rebound in recent months, helped by demand for the latest iPhone edition and consumers switching from rival devices. Revenue from the country jumped 38% to $25.5 billion in the holiday quarter that ended in December.

Speaking at the same event as Cook, Chinese Premier Li Qiang cited Apple as an example of a company with a highly diversified supply chain.

“If we politicize industrial issues and deliberately weaponize the supply chain, we will only increase costs for various companies and weaken development momentum,” Li said. “China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with all parties to jointly maintain the stability and security of the global supply chain.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Wall Street is bracing for a Monday deadline that President Donald Trump set for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while the global economy reels from an energy crisis that shows little signs of abating.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 30 points, or 0.07%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.15%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.18%.

U.S. oil futures dipped 0.6% to at $97.64 a barrel. The national average gasoline price reached $3.94 a gallon on Sunday, up more than $1 over the past month, according to AAA.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked down less than 1 basis point to 4.386%. The U.S. dollar was up 0.09% against the euro and was down 0.04% against the yen.

On Saturday evening in the U.S., Trump gave Tehran 48 hours to comply with his demand or else face the destruction of power plants, potentially escalating his war to civilian infrastructure.

Iran responded to the ultimatum by warning that such an attack would result in its forces similarly targeting vital infrastructure, including desalination plants that provide much of the region’s fresh water.

Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, raised alarms earlier this month about this exact path of escalation as he called on the president to declare victory and “get out” of Iran.

“If you see that type of destruction continue, you could literally render the Gulf almost uninhabitable,” he said in an episode of the All-In podcast on March 13. “I mean you’re not going to have enough water for 100 million people, and human beings just cannot survive very long without water. So that would be a truly catastrophic scenario, and we’re talking about destroying the Gulf states economically and then also from a humanitarian perspective.”

Both sides showed no signs of backing down and further upped the ante militarily. Trump is sending three more amphibious assault ships and 2,500 additional Marines to the Mideast, joining a separate Marine Expeditionary Unit already headed there. There are already more than 50,000 U.S. troops in the region.

Meanwhile, Iran launched ballistic missiles at a U.S.-U.K. base 2,500 miles away on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The attack was unsuccessful, but it demonstrated that Iran’s missiles have much longer range than previously known and could theoretically reach most of Europe.

On Sunday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte backed the Iran war and predicted the alliance would eventually come around to support it too, after several members rebuffed Trump’s demand that they provide naval escorts.

“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,” Rutte told CBS News. “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.”

In addition to NATO, Trump got more signs of support from the United Arab Emirates, which has suffered from a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones.

Anwar Gargash, a senior UAE diplomat, suggested an increasingly hardened stance toward Iran that aligns more closely with the U.S. and Israeli stance.

“Our thinking does not stop at a ceasefire, but rather turns toward solutions that ensure lasting security in the Arabian Gulf, curbing the nuclear threat, missiles, drones, and the bullying of the straits,” he wrote on X. “It is inconceivable that this aggression should turn into a permanent state of threat.”

With no evidence of any talks aimed at halting the conflict, the thousands of Marines headed to the Mideast could be involved in a climactic battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and crush Iran’s ability to weaponize it again.

Still, some have called for a less dangerous option, namely a naval blockade of Iran’s oil exports meant to pressure the regime to open the strait.

“The US can implode Iran’s economy by shutting down its oil exports,” Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a Substack on March 13. “That might open up the Strait of Hormuz a lot faster than anything else. Time to implode Iran’s economy and give the Ayatollahs a taste of their own medicine.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

It’s exceedingly expensive to own a pet, prompting owners to delay veterinary visits or reconsider adopting one in the first place. Yet, animal health companies’ earnings keep growing.

That’s down to the unwavering love between owners and their pets.

While some owners might extend the time between their pets’ annual wellness visits to save money, they’ll shell out when their darling is truly sick or hurt, and that care is often the most expensive — and lucrative.

Last year, Matthew Joseph, a 41-year-old New Yorker, spent $11,000 on lifesaving spleen surgery for his now 14-year-old pooch Frankie. “The amount that we spend on Frankie, you could probably buy a Hyundai, or finance one at least.”

Animal diagnostic testing and pharmaceutical companies like IDEXX Laboratories, Inc., Zoetis Inc. and Elanco Animal Health Inc., along with pet store companies like Petco Health & Wellness Co. and Chewy, Inc. are reaping the benefits. 

Pet-care costs have been rising faster than overall inflation. The consumer price index for all urban consumers increased 2.4% in February from a year earlier, while pet services — including veterinary care — jumped 5.1%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Total vet visits declined 3% in the fourth quarter of last year, marking the 16th straight quarter of declines, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ann-Hunter van Kirk wrote in a note, adding there’s only low correlation with the performance of pharmaceutical pet companies. Last month, vet visits fell 1.7% year-over-year, according to data provided by Vetsource. 

“People in a down economy, they may not be taking their pet to the vet quite as often as they need to, but they also still know the main things that they need to do — those maintenance therapies — and they’re still doing that,” van Kirk said in an interview.

Pet owners are still spending, Zoetis Chief Financial Officer Wetteny Joseph said at the Leerink Global Healthcare Conference on March 9, specifically for visits that incur “higher prices” such as emergency hospital visits. 

Essential Visits Only

Andi Lichtenfeld – who, like most owners, doesn’t have pet insurance – only takes her two dogs, three-year-olds Marilyn and Wayne, to the vet for emergencies, or when they don’t seem like themselves. The 37-year-old says this is similar to how she treats herself; if she’s sick, she goes to the doctor. For their vaccines, Lichtenfeld takes them to Petco.

Petco shares surged 35% on March 12 after the company’s forecast beat estimates, although its revenue is still pressured as it works to turn around operations.

IDEXX’s long-term growth should be fueled by “heightened spending by younger consumers and increased pet life expectancy that requires more expensive care,” according to BI’s van Kirk. 

“A lot of these companies don’t expect the macro dynamic to change in 2026,” Jefferies analyst Keith Devas said, but “we saw over the last 18 months that the vet visit trends are not very correlated to these companies’ results.”

The lack of correlation between declining vet visits and related companies’ earnings speaks to the growing humanization of our furry friends. 

As pets have moved “from the yard to the kitchen into the bedroom,” owners’ bonds deepen and their willingness to spend increases, said Harold Herzog, professor emeritus at Western Carolina University, who studies the psychology behind human-animal interactions.

Treating pets like family has accelerated as more people delay or forgo having children due to cost or personal choice, said Ingrid Tague, a professor at the University of Denver who has written a book about pets in British history. “The more we treat them as people, the more we get caught up in that same kind of consumerist cycle that we have for ourselves.”

For example, pet food used to just be kibble and canned meat, but now includes foods humans could salivate over — ribeyes, salmon fillets and flamboyant multicolored cakes fit for a child’s birthday party.

That explains why many pet owners are willing to stomach rising costs.

“I would never use the word expensive because to me the ROI is better than anything else I would spend,” Joseph said, noting Frankie’s “unconditional love and companionship.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Project Hail Mary, from Amazon.com Inc.’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, was the No. 1 film at the US and Canadian box office this weekend with $80.5 million worth of tickets, scoring the highest grossing debut of any movie this year.

The film’s performance in its opening weekend surpassed Creed III as the best for an Amazon title since the company acquired MGM for $8.5 billion in 2022. Industry tracker Boxoffice Pro had forecast sales of at least $70 million. More than a fifth of Project Hail Mary‘s box office came from Imax Corp. screens.

Since closing the MGM deal, which handed Amazon control of film franchises including James Bond and The Pink Panther, the e-commerce conglomerate has pledged to release more than a dozen pictures in cinemas annually before making them available on its Prime Video streaming service. 

Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, is adapted from the novel of the same name by Andy Weir. It follows the adventure of biologist-turned-teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, who wakes up with amnesia aboard a spacecraft.

The film achieved critical acclaim, and its commercial performance ends a string of low box-office hauls for Amazon this year on titles such as Mercy and Crime 101.

Amazon, which hired former Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. executives Courtenay Valenti and Sue Kroll to run its film studio and lead its marketing, is less dependent on the success of its theatrical releases than traditional Hollywood distributors. It uses cinemas primarily as a means to recoup some production and marketing costs before feeding the titles to its Prime user base, which is largely formed of online shoppers. 

Amazon’s commitment to theaters helps support chains such as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Regal Cineworld Group that are seeking more films from Hollywood. Last year, Amazon announced that it would be working with Denis Villeneuve, the director of the Dune trilogy, on a new Bond film. 

The domestic box office is up 15.2% so far this year compared with the same period in 2025 thanks to releases including Hoppers from Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar subsidiary and Scream 7 from Paramount Skydance Corp.’s film studio. 

Before Project Hail Mary, the best debut of 2026 was Scream 7. The movie, released in February, has since sold $193.8 million worth of cinema tickets, becoming the highest grossing picture in the horror franchise’s history. 

The debut of Hoppers earlier in March was also the best for an original Pixar film in a decade. 

Amazon’s next big-budget release in theaters this year is Masters of the Universe in June, based on the franchise controlled by toymaker Mattel Inc. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence and space data centers — will be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk, the chief executive officer of both companies, said he will start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that will have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind, and test them. Musk, who has no background in semiconductor production and a history of over-promising on goals and timelines, had said before that the company will start with a smaller scale fab before moving to a bigger one.

Musk has said the semiconductor industry is moving too slow to keep up with the supply of chips he expects to need, even as the industry increases output.

“That rate is much less than we’d like,” Musk said. “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab.” Musk’s project would call for one day supporting a terawatt of computing power per year, the amount he expects the companies to eventually use as he ramps up his investments in AI and robotics.

Musk detailed some specific plans, including producing chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts a year of computing power on Earth, and chips that can support a terawatt in space, but gave no timelines for the facility or its output.

Musk has said previously that the facility would produce 2 nanometer chips. The project appears to be planned for an area near Tesla’s existing Austin headquarters and gigafactory, based on a photo shown during the presentation.

Read More: Why the AI Boom Will Make Phones, Cars, Devices More Expensive

Many executives have expressed anxiety about a shortage of chips — particularly memory chips — during the race to build computing power for AI. But it’s rare to try building them. Bringing semiconductor facilities online typically takes tens of billions dollars and requires the purchase of complex machines from multiple providers. Factories can take years to become fully operational.

Musk made the announcement in a downtown Austin venue to an audience that included Texas Governor Greg Abbott. If it eventually succeeds, the project could help elevate Texas’ status as a chipmaking hub. Tesla already has an agreement with Samsung facility near Austin on upcoming chips. The EV company also has existing suppliers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Micron Technology Inc. that Musk says are also not able to meet all the company’s needs as Tesla pivots its focus to robotics, autonomous driving and AI.

The facility is expected to make two types of chips, one of which will be optimized for edge and inference, primarily for his vehicle, robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robots. The other will be a high-power chip, designed for space that could be used by SpaceX and xAI. SpaceX acquired xAI in February, with the latter operating as a wholly owned subsidiary. Musk said he expects xAI to use the vast majority of the chips.

Read More: Will Putting AI Data Centers in Space Actually Work?

During the presentation, Musk also unveiled a speculative rendering of a future “mini” AI data center satellite, one piece of a much larger satellite system that he wants SpaceX to build to do complex computing in space. In January, SpaceX requested a license from the Federal Communications Commission to launch one million data center satellites into orbit around Earth.

Musk said that the mini satellite he revealed would have the capacity for 100 kilowatts of power.

“We expect future satellites to probably go to the megawatt range,” Musk said.

Raising money to build and launch AI data centers in space is one of the driving forces behind SpaceX’s planned IPO later this year. SpaceX is expected to raise as much as $50 billion in a record-setting IPO this summer which could value it at more than $1.75 trillion, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

Read More: SpaceX Weighs Confidential IPO Filing as Soon as March 

The presentation also included some of Musk’s loftier ambitions. He showed an animation of how SpaceX could potentially launch satellites from the surface of the moon, and reiterated his vision for a future filled with “amazing abundance” — something he has been touting in recent months.

“The future I want to see: I want us to live long enough to see the mass driver on the moon,” Musk said, referring to the contraption that would launch satellites from the lunar surface, “because that’s going to be incredibly epic.”

The facility announcement comes as Tesla increasingly works with xAI and SpaceX on artificial intelligence projects. Tesla has already been working with xAI on a project called Digital Optimus or Macrohard, and Tesla also sells its megapack batteries to xAI. Tesla has also integrated xAI’s chatbot, Grok, into some of its vehicles. In January, Tesla announced a $2 billion investment into xAI and a framework agreement for the companies to work together. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

For two hours, Claire Jefferies wanted to get away from the war in Iran and the rising gas prices and just commune with nature. And, so, she treated herself to a little forest bathing.

“When I’m here, it’s almost like a protective bubble around me,” the human resources director said amid oaks and flowering magnolias at the J.C. Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina. “It provides a shield.”

The Sunday morning session was led by certified forest therapy guide Shawn Ramsey. Jingling a tiny brass bell, she called her dozen or so charges to gather for meditation, breathing exercises and to commune with nature.

“I invite you to really spend the next 10 minutes just exploring this area,” she said, her own eyes closed. “Really focusing on your breath, on your footsteps. All the natural sounds around you. Maybe the manmade sounds, too. Thinking about the forest’s natural rhythm and how are part of that here in this urban, forested environment.”

Based on the Japanese wellness practice of Shinrin-yoku, the activity has been known to reduce stress, improve mood, lower blood pressure and boost the immune system.

Although the arboretum is in a busy section of a growing city, Ramsey said the benefits of tuning out and getting in touch with nature are the same. She led the group of about a dozen through the various gardens, having them crush conifer twigs between their fingers and smell them, or just touch trees.

“You know, in this day and age, there’s a lot of stress and anxiety and chaos,” she said. “And people are searching for ways to kind of cope with that.”

Transportation safety researcher Alan Mintz came with a friend. He had to be reminded to leave the talk of news at the entrance.

“I think it’s important for people to take the opportunity to exist in natural spaces, both to unwind and relax, so that it can be easier to interact with other people,” he said as he stood in the dappled light filtering through the trees. “And to take a moment to appreciate beautiful things. That way, hopefully, they can carry that forward and have more of an appreciation for other people and other cultures that they might be less experienced with.”

Jefferies had to remind a friend to stop talking about news as they walked beneath the gently waving canopy.,

“That focus back into spending time in nature and the healing power of that, and just remembering that we’re part of something bigger, that we’re all connected,” said the mother of a 9-year-old son. “And that what we do in our actions that we take really matter to the rest of the world. And so there’s no better place to see that than here, where you can see all of the interconnectedness and the ways that this plant life naturally supports one another. Doesn’t take more than they need.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A California sheriff running for governor has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he’s investigating a ballot count discrepancy.

County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections.

Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.

In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.

Bianco seized ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. He called the effort “a fact-finding mission.”

“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” he said Friday.

Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary that includes more than half a dozen Democrats. California runs a top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party, and sends the two candidates who get the most voters onto the November general election.

Leading California Democrats are worried that their party has so many candidates, they risk splitting the vote and sending Bianco and Steve Hilton, another top Republican, onto the general election. That would be a stunning outcome in the heavily Democratic state.

Bianco said the investigation had “absolutely nothing to do” with his campaign for governor.

“I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County,” he said.

The effort came as President Donald Trump has repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.

Bonta has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of the letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”

The letters said Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of ballots and elections materials from the county’s elections office with a warrant in February. At issue, Bianco said, is a discrepancy a citizen group reported between the handwritten ballot intake logs and the number of votes reported to the state.

Bianco said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a difference elections officials have refuted at county meetings, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They argue the handwritten rolls, which were not relied on to check the count, were being kept by temporary elections workers who had worked long days and may have made mistakes.

Bianco said Friday that the count had started and stopped, but would now resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A potentially decisive showdown to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz away from Iran is taking shape, with thousands of U.S. Marines headed for the Middle East.

President Donald Trump upped the ante over the weekend by vowing to destroy Iranian power plants if the strait isn’t reopened by Monday. Iran responded by threatening to target critical infrastructure around the Gulf, including desalination plants that provide most of the region’s fresh water.

Trump previously suggested warships would escort oil tankers through the strait, but they would still enter an Iranian “kill box.” So with both sides showing no signs of backing down, Trump may choose to expand his war from a mostly aerial campaign to a ground offensive.

U.S. troops could be deployed to areas along the strait to clear out threats to ships in the narrow waterway, which has been largely been closed by attacks from the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Marines could also land on Kharg Island, which sits farther north along the Persian Gulf coast and is the hub for 90% of Iran’s oil exports. U.S. control of the island could be used a leverage to pressure Tehran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz.

But experts have pointed to the risk ground troops would face in holding any territory, given that Iran has inflicted significant damage on U.S. military bases and embassies throughout the region as swarms of projectiles overwhelm air defenses.

For now, the U.S. military is continuing to pound the Hormuz area in anticipation of the next move, whatever it will be. Apache helicopters and the vaunted A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft have been targeting what remains of Iran’s naval capabilities, such as fast attack boats, while bombers have also destroyed stockpiles of anti-ship missiles.

Analysts have raised another possibility that could avoid putting boots on the ground: a naval blockade that prevents Iranian oil from reaching its destination.

The idea is to turn the tables on Iran and subject it to the same shock that closing the strait has delivered to its oil-producing neighbors, who have slashed their output while their crude has nowhere to go.

“The US can implode Iran’s economy by shutting down its oil exports,” Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a Substack on March 13. “That might open up the Strait of Hormuz a lot faster than anything else. Time to implode Iran’s economy and give the Ayatollahs a taste of their own medicine.”

While he has been skeptical that the U.S. Navy has enough ships to escort all the tankers that typically transit the Strait of Hormuz, he said it has the resources to blockade Iran’s oil exports.

Removing more supply from global oil markets should send prices even higher, but Brooks argued crude might do the opposite if a U.S. blockade is seen ending the war quickly.

China, which buys most of Iran’s oil, would be incentivized to lobby Tehran to reopen the strait, and a blockade of Iran’s exports would deprive the regime of hard currency needed to prop up its war machine, he added.

“An embargo of Iranian oil, if the collapse in Iran’s economy is deep enough, could convince markets that the closure of the Strait might end sooner rather than later. As a result, Brent might only spike briefly or even fall,” Brooks wrote in a later post.

Meanwhile, Iran’s control of the strait is allowing it to ship even more oil than it did before the war started. The IRGC has also created an alternate route for ships that requires other countries to obtain permission to cross the strait, with at least one instance of a shipper paying $2 million.

Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a longtime national security official, made a similar argument for a blockade this past week.

He proposed an “Open for All or Closed to All” policy that he believes has the best chance to resolve the Hormuz crisis. The veteran diplomat also dismissed naval escorts and ground troops as too difficult.

Blockading Iran’s oil exports would require setting up a 200-mile-wide defensive line across the Gulf of Oman, using ships, aircraft, and drones, Haass said.

He added that the policy would deny Iran its main source of revenue and impose domestic pressures to accept a ceasefire—or risk a larger challenge to the regime’s authority. Any increase in oil prices would also be modest as a blockade would remove relatively small amounts of Iranian oil from the global market.

“Under such a policy, the United States and its partners would announce that no tanker from Iran would be permitted to reach its destination in another country until Iran backed off its threats to and attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait,” Haass explained in a Substack post. “In other words, Iran cannot pick and choose who gets the region’s oil and who does not.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com