Donald Trump has spent the better part of 40 years mastering a single, ruthless skill: making other people absorb his losses. He perfected it in Atlantic City, where, as Fortune‘s Shawn Tully reported, his casino empire lost a total of $1.1 billion, twice declared bankruptcy, and wrote down or restructured $1.8 billion in debt, as Trump paid himself roughly $82 million.

Trump also refined his methods in bankruptcy courts over the decades, filing for Chapter 11 protection six times across his business empire and walking away from each implosion with his name still on the marquee. He brought the same instinct to international diplomacy—renegotiating NATO funding commitments, tearing up the original Iran nuclear deal, brandishing tariffs until trading partners blinked. The playbook never changed: manufacture chaos, make everyone else desperate for a way out, then collect.

Now, on the third week of an active shooting war with Iran, Trump has run headlong into something his entire operating philosophy was never designed to handle: a 21-mile-wide chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf that has no CEO to bully, no bondholder to threaten, and no shareholders to absorb the loss. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% to 25% of the world’s oil supply every single day. It cannot be restructured. It cannot be taken into bankruptcy. And right now, it is effectively closed.

The Deal That Fell Apart

The story begins, as so many Trump stories do, with a negotiation that went sideways. Through late February, Trump’s envoys conducted round after round of indirect nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva and Vienna, demanding that Tehran renounce uranium enrichment entirely. Trump told reporters he was “not happy” with Iran’s posture and that Iranian diplomats were not willing to go far enough. The familiar script seemed to be playing out—maximum pressure, strategic ambiguity, a deal dangled and then yanked back until the other side folded.​

But Iran, unlike Atlantic City bondholders, held a card Trump hadn’t fully priced in. When Trump launched a widely anticipated, yet still seemingly under-rehearsed attack on Iran, alongside Israel, Iranian forces began mining the strait, firing anti-ship missiles at commercial tankers, and deploying drones against vessels traversing the narrow waterway. U.S. Central Command sank 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels in an attempt to clear the passage. It wasn’t enough. Shipping activity through the strait ground nearly to a halt. As of Monday, Iran said traffic was going through the strait—just not for any U.S. allies.

When the Numbers Turn

The economic bill arrived faster than almost any analyst predicted. The International Energy Agency announced an emergency release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves—a measure rarely deployed—as the conflict severed roughly 8 million barrels per day from global supply. Goldman Sachs revised its 2026 inflation forecast upward by 0.8 percentage points to 2.9% and slashed GDP growth projections by 0.3 points to 2.2%. In a worst-case scenario—a full month of disruption with crude averaging $110 a barrel—Goldman put recession probability at 25%.

For a president who built his second term on the explicit promise of lower prices and economic supremacy, the numbers were damning. The administration had tried diplomatic pressure, strategic reserve releases, and back-channel appeals to OPEC allies. None of it moved the needle. “The U.S. is running out of ways to get oil prices down,” CNBC concluded. “It is up to the military.” In Trump’s world, when a deal goes bad, you find a new counterparty. The global energy market doesn’t work that way.​

Make Someone Else Pay

Confronted with an adversary immune to his usual leverage, Trump defaulted to the strategy he knows best: offload the cost onto someone else. On March 15, Trump told reporters he had “demanded” that roughly seven countries join a coalition to police the waterway, warning that any nation that refused would face a “bad future” with the United States.

It was a classic Trump move—the transactional ultimatum, the threat wrapped in a favor. But the response was a portrait of the limits of his brand of coercion. NATO allies rejected the demand outright. China, which continues importing Iranian oil, reacted with studied indifference. Trump suggested he might cancel a summit with Beijing over it; Beijing did not appear alarmed. The dealmaker had issued his terms. The world declined to countersign.

The Adversary That Won’t Blink

On Friday and Saturday, U.S. forces executed strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island—the hub for roughly 90% of Iranian oil exports—hitting 90 military targets in what Trump called one of the largest operations in the history of the Middle East. And yet, he conceded, Tehran could still launch a drone or use mines and missiles in the waterway. The strait remained dangerous. Tankers stayed away.

Foreign policy analyst Matthew Kroenig put it plainly, telling NPR: “As long as Iran has drones and missiles and continues to fire them, I think many commercial shippers are going to think it’s just too dangerous even with an escort to pass through the strait”. Even after any ceasefire, uncleared mines could keep insurers—and thus tankers—away for months. You can’t renegotiate your way past an unswept mine.​

Trump said he wasn’t ready to make a deal because “the terms aren’t good enough“. In a boardroom, that’s leverage. In the Strait of Hormuz, it’s something closer to a confession. The Art of the Deal was always premised on the other side wanting something badly enough to eventually fold. The strait wants nothing. It simply is — narrow, contested, and utterly indifferent to the brand of the man trying to reopen it.​

For four decades, Trump found someone else to hold the bag when his bets went bad. Standing at the edge of the Persian Gulf, with oil markets convulsing, allies shrugging, and Iranian drones still buzzing over shipping lanes, he is learning what every creditor, contractor, and counterpart he ever stiffed already knew: eventually, the deal comes due.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

There is a new trend in prediction markets: betting on whether Bitcoin will go up or down in the next five of fifteen minutes. On Polymarket, a five-minute wager on the price of the largest cryptocurrency has garnered more than $60 million in trading volume in a single day, according to Dune Analytics.

The minute-by-minute wagers on Bitcoin highlight the relative simplicity of bets on prediction markets. As opposed to traditional sports betting, which have an array of complex numbers relating to the spread, moneyline, and total points scored, the prediction market interface has a lower barrier to entry. Users can see what percentage of their peers are voting “yes” about a certain wager and how many are voting “no”. 

On Monday at 1pm ET, some 73% of Polymarket were betting that the price of Bitcoin would go up in the next five minutes. After that five minute interval expired at 1:05 PM ET, the platform promptly served up a new wager for the next five minutes of Bitcoin’s performance and so on. Polymarket-rival, Kalshi, meanwhile is offering bets on whether Bitcoin will go up or down every fifteen minutes. About 37% of users predicted the price would go up between 1:00 PM ET and 1:15 PM ET, but of course that percentage is constantly changing as more people join the betting pool, or close out their existing positions.

These quick-hit bets reinforce how, on prediction market platforms, users can bet on practically anything. People can put money on whether the U.S. will confirm that aliens exist before 2027, which already has seen about $12 million in transaction volume, or whether Jesus Christ will return this year, which is at $45 million in transaction volume. 

Sports are the most popular category to wager on in prediction markets, as they comprise roughly 90% of the bets on Kalshi. Betting on culture has become increasingly popular. Over $120 million was placed on bets about last night’s Oscars on Polymarket and Kalshi, according to Forbes. 

Prediction markets started to receive mainstream attention during the 2024 presidential election, when they correctly predicted Donald Trump’s victory, contrary to many national polls. The two leading platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, are looking to raise money at a $20 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Peter Thiel is taking his ecclesiastical and cultural warnings about the Antichrist on the road. His latest stop? The seat of the Catholic Church.

Over the past year, Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, has issued some of the most exclusive invites Silicon Valley visionaries could aspire to receive. The Palantir and PayPal co-founder has hosted a series of lectures around the world dedicated to discussing his own views on the biblical Antichrist, and how it relates to the modern-day discussion of technological risk.

Thiel has spoken about his theories publicly—most notably during a New York Times podcast interview last year—but his deepest musings have been reserved for private sessions with selective audiences in San Francisco and Paris over the past few months. On Sunday, Thiel began hosting the latest edition, a planned four-day lecture series in Rome, first reported last week by the Associated Press.

Theory of the end-times

The contents of Thiel’s sessions are private, but likely to follow a similar format to his previous lectures. In Thiel’s telling, the biblical Antichrist figure prophesied to oppose Jesus Christ to bring on the apocalypse might emerge in the form of a reassuring actor who exerts control by promising safety and an end to the “existential risk” of technological development. It’s a theological interpretation that has turned heads among Silicon Valley elites, and caught Thiel in the crosshairs of both the Italian government and the Holy See.

In Thiel’s framing, the Antichrist is not an outwardly malevolent figure, but rather a comforting administrator, one that promises tighter control of innovation to stamp out the risk of runaway technology—particularly artificial intelligence—replacing humanity. This positioning is a farce, in Thiel’s telling, as the Antichrist is in reality quietly consolidating power and control over society. He has criticized groups wary of technological progress, including AI skeptics and environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg, for being pawns of the Antichrist. 

Thiel’s vision paints Silicon Valley technologists not only as architects of humanity’s future, but as protectors of civilization, often grounding his arguments in his Christian beliefs. His argument blends theological language with Silicon Valley’s anxieties over AI, transhumanism, and decay of meaning, and has been greeted with muted praise by some tech figures, such as fellow Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

Thiel’s frosty Italian greeting

Thiel’s theory has plenty of skeptics too, and it’s not just AI doomers and climate activists. Ahead of his arrival in Rome, government officials and authorities in the Church pushed back against his theological stance.

“Thiel is above all a political theologian operating at the very heart of the Silicon Valley ecosystem,” Paolo Benanti, a priest who has advised two papacies on matters related to technology ethics and artificial intelligence, wrote in an essay published Saturday, adding that Thiel’s theories are best understood as a “radicalization” of Western values including individuality, technological progress, and the spirit of competition.

“Peter Thiel does not believe humanity can be redeemed,” read an article published last week in Avvenire, a newspaper owned by a conference of Italian bishops. It argued that Thiel’s vision favors replacing democracy and the right of law with an elite “superplutocracy” that would “monitor and protect humanity from the arrival of the Antichrist.” The article additionally claims Thiel’s description of the Antichrist applies to “anyone who places limits on unlimited progress.”

The Catholic Church has taken a more assertive stance on technological advancement in recent years, particularly when it comes to AI. Moral regulation of AI was frequently mentioned by the late Pope Francis. Leo XIV, his incumbent successor, similarly urged audiences during a speech last December to “pause and reflect” on how AI might impact children, and how the technology could be guided to serve the “common good.” 

Thiel’s event in Rome was organized in partnership with the Cluny Institute, an organization housed within the Catholic University of America, and the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, according to the AP. Neither replied to Fortune’s request for comment. 

In a press release last week announcing Thiel’s event in Rome, the association, which has ties to Italy’s far-right, warned of “more or less hidden” forces that were “bent on destroying what remains of the West.” The association praised Thiel for having the “courage and intellectual liberty” to discuss these dangers.

But those same themes have provoked skepticism and even hostility among some Italian politicians for more grounded reasons. During a parliamentary session this month, lawmakers criticized Thiel’s “scandalous ideas,” arguing that they verged on ideological extremism while calling for more transparency on the relationship between the Italian government and Palantir, the defense technology firm Thiel co-founded and currently acts as chairman for. 

Outside parliament, Thiel’s supporters frame his warnings as a defense of Western spiritual identity amid mounting technological disruption. In Italy’s polarized political climate, however, his Antichrist theory has become as much a political flashpoint as a philosophical one.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

More than two weeks into a war President Donald Trump started without asking allies for buy-in, he is now asking for backup, and mostly getting left on read.

Trump spent the weekend demanding that allies, China, and other Asia-Pacific nations send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally flows. He even warned Sunday that NATO faces a “very bad future” if allies don’t step up, marking another threat just two months after he precipitated an existential crisis for the alliance over Greenland.

Since the U.S. and Iran launched strikes on Feb. 28, Iran has effectively shut the waterway and may have even begun laying mines. Over the weekend, the messaging around the Strait of Hormuz remained muddled: Tehran said that the Strait was “open to all” except America and its allies, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed on CNBC Monday morning that it was the U.S. that “allowed” Iranian oil tankers to cross the strait. The price of U.S. oil lowered significantly on Bessent’ s comments, now under $95 a barrel. 

Despite the posturing, only a handful of ships have crossed the Hormuz over the last few days. And the response from the international community to Trump’s calls has varied from a polite silence to outright refusal. 

Germany was very blunt. 

“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It is not NATO’s war,” a spokesperson for Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday, adding that Berlin had “not considered” participating before the war began and will not be considering it now. 

Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel also laid it on thick, saying that the NATO member is happy to help with satellites and communications but “Blackmail is also not what I wish for.” 

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the request falls “out of NATO’s area of action”: a reference to Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which limits the alliance’s mutual defense obligations to the region north of the Tropic of Cancer.

Still, European officials have their own incentive to keep Hormuz open and fear what Trump may do. Not only does Europe rely on Gulf oil supplies, there’s concern Trump will declare victory in Iran in the coming weeks, pull out of the war, and leave them holding the minesweeper (France and the Netherlands historically have some of world’s best minehunting/sweeping technologies). 

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered the warmest language of any leader Monday, saying the UK is “working with allies, including our European partners, to bring together a viable collective plan” to restore navigation, but still committed no ships or timeline. Starmer also defended his refusal to join the offensive, saying he wouldn’t send British forces into a war “without a plan to get us out.”

In Asia, the response has been equally noncommittal. China’s foreign ministry sidestepped questions about sending ships, while Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who visits the White House Thursday, has offered no promise. Trump told the Financial Times he’d like to know Beijing’s position before a planned summit at the end of March—a trip Bessent acknowledged could be delayed, though he insisted any schedule change would reflect logistics as opposed to a rift.

Australia also ruled out sending naval vessels, but said last week it would send a surveillance aircraft to the Middle East. South Korea said it will note Trump’s requests but would be exploring “various measures from multiple angles.”

The one bright spot for Washington is that the UAE doubled down on U.S. ties, showing strength after absorbing nearly 2,000 Iranian projectiles. “We don’t take to being bullied around,” Reem Al-Hashimy, the UAE’s minister for international cooperation, told the ABC.

Meanwhile, the cost of inaction keeps climbing. Oil hit its highest level since July 2022 last week, and U.S. gas prices are already up 20% since the war started. The International Energy Agency called the disruption “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

For roughly 1,800 years, the world’s largest economy sat somewhere along the Yangtze River. A new chart from the Bank of America Institute — spanning 2,000 years of global GDP data — shows that America’s moment at the top wasn’t destiny. It was an accident of history. And it’s ending.

The United States emerged from World War II as the undisputed economic superpower, accounting for nearly a third of global GDP at its postwar peak. Prophetically, in 1941, Fortune founder Henry Luce dubbed this era “the American century.”

The U.S. spent the better part of the 20th century treating its position at the top of the economic order as something close to a birthright. “American exceptionalism,” the idea that the country was fundamentally distinct from — and often superior to — other nations due to its unique founding principles, political institutions, historical development, and perceived moral mission in the world, dates back to the precolonial days and John Winthrop’s 1630 articulation of the country as a “city upon a hill.”

But in economic terms, America’s exceptional share of global GDP was a very real thing from the 1860s through the 1950s, as calculated by the Bank of America Institute, citing thousands of years of data from the Groningen Growth and Development Centre‘s Maddison Project database, one of the most comprehensive long-run economic datasets in existence.

This is a bit standard for the Dutch research center and its database based on the ideas of Angus Maddison, a pioneering economist who tracked GDP and living standards across centuries and countries, but if you look at the blue chunk of the chart, showing the U.S. shooting up over the centuries, you’d be forgiven for seeing the U.S. as quite exceptional.

The chart also shows, however, that there’s always been one other exceptional country. The chart plots the share of global GDP held by the world’s major powers from the year 1 AD through 2022. What it shows is both humbling and, for anyone paying attention to the current global moment, entirely unsurprising: the world’s economic center of gravity is shifting back toward where it spent most of recorded history. Back toward Asia. Back toward China.​

The long view

The chart’s most striking feature is not a line going up. It’s a line going down — and then, slowly, back up again.

For roughly the first 1,800 years of the Common Era, China and India together accounted for the dominant share of global economic output. The world was, by this measure, an Asian world. The chart supports the narrative in the epic global history of capitalism written by Harvard’s Sven Beckert, who told Fortune in January that his eight years of studying capitalism’s origins reinforced to him how “weak” and “marginal,” yet also truly global, the dominant way of organizing economic life used to be.

Beckert’s book highlights how ancient mercantile communities of capitalists emerged in the Middle East and Asia, for instance, with the Port of Aden, in Yemen, or Cambay, in modern Gujarat, India. Goods left Aden and traded across oceans as early as 1150, and Song-dynasty China invented paper money hundreds of years before Europe did.

When Europe Rose, and America Peaked

The Groningen data show clearly that Europe’s rise — led by the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain — was a 19th-century phenomenon. The United States didn’t register meaningfully on the chart until the late 1800s, and didn’t achieve its peak dominance until the mid-20th century.​

That peak, visible as a bulging arc of American blue across the chart, coincided with a historically anomalous moment: a Europe devastated by two world wars, a China wracked by civil war and Maoist catastrophe, and an India still emerging from colonialism. In other words, the era of American exceptionalism was also, in large part, the era of everyone else’s misfortune.

“These transitions often followed major geopolitical or financial turning points,” BofA Institute noted in its report — a line that, in retrospect, reads less like historical observation and more like a warning.​

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio wrote in Fortune that the 2020s feel to him like a movie he’s seen before, with “the rise of a new type of world order” that he sees as “more like many pre-1945 world orders in which there were great powers conflicts and gunboat diplomacy-type geopolitical moves.”

Photograph by Iman Al-dabbagh/Fortune

Dalio’s Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order described his theory of six cycles of successive breakdowns in financial cycles, with stage six being “a period of great disorder.” The last of these began in 1929 and ended in 1945 after World War II, he wrote, resulting in “clear winners, most importantly the United States, which determined how the new orders would work.”

What is implied, of course, is that the winners of this current period will determine how the next world order will work and who will benefit.

China’s correction

China’s share of the global economy — which had collapsed to negligible levels by the mid-20th century — surged back in the early 21st century, more dramatically than that of any other nation on the chart. By 2024, China accounted for roughly 19.45% of global GDP, nearly triple its share in the year 2000, according to Statista. By 2030, the same data projects China’s share will reach 21.7%.​

China’s economy grew 5.0% in 2025, meeting the government’s official target and seizing a record share of global demand through an export boom. Meanwhile, Beijing’s newly unveiled 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) is explicitly targeting the integration of artificial intelligence into the country’s manufacturing base — betting that the same factory floor dominance that powered China’s rise in global trade will now power its rise in the AI economy. China wants its digital economy to account for 12.5% of GDP by 2030, up from 10.5% in 2025. The plan includes dozens of major infrastructure and industrial projects, national 5G upgrades, and a push to build sovereign AI compute capacity.

The exceptionalism trade falters

For the United States, the picture is more complicated. By nominal GDP, America remains the world’s largest economy — $30 trillion in 2024, with financial markets valued at $79 trillion. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have argued that U.S. dominance is structural and durable, citing America’s role as the world’s most innovative, diverse, and resilient economy.​

But the markets told a different story in early 2025. As the so-called “American exceptionalism trade” began to unravel into the “sell America trade,” the war in Iran paradoxically boosted U.S. assets. Still, the S&P 500 is down roughly 2.5% year-to-date, while the broader MSCI Global Index is up 0.8% and the dollar is up 1.76% year-to-date. ​

The structural pressures are real. U.S. GDP per capita — still above $85,000, compared to China’s $13,000 — reflects a prosperity gap that will take decades to close. But per capita GDP is not the same as geopolitical weight. China’s economy grows at 5.2% per year, while America expands at around 2.1%. At those trajectories, the gap in total economic mass narrows every year.​

What the chart really says

The BofA Institute’s report frames today’s shifts as part of a familiar pattern: “renewed focus on affordability, rapid advances in AI, and a broader shift from services back toward manufacturing”. Those three forces — cost deflation, AI disruption, and the reindustrialization of the global economy — all tilt, at least at the margin, toward China’s strengths rather than America’s.​

What the chart ultimately shows is not that American exceptionalism was a myth. It’s that it was a moment — a historically contingent window, opened by catastrophe elsewhere and now gradually closing as the rest of the world heals, industrializes, and competes. For 2,000 years before the American century, the world’s largest economy sat somewhere along the Yangtze River. The line on the chart that shows China’s share plummeting to near-zero and now racing back upward is not a story about China catching up.

It’s a story about the world returning to normal.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Elon Musk said he is rebuilding xAI from the ground up just a month after SpaceX acquired his AI startup in one of the biggest mergers of all time.

Following a gradual exodus from xAI, the world’s richest man is trying to reimagine the company with heightened ambitions.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO added in a post on X last week that xAI was undergoing a process similar to an earlier one at Tesla, which Musk has been CEO of since 2008.

“xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” he wrote in the post.

Musk said the purpose of the SpaceX acquisition is building “orbital data centers,” which he has said are the most cost-effective way of producing AI computing power.

Yet here on Earth, Musk is dealing with a seemingly less lofty, but all-too-important, staffing issue. A pair of xAI cofounders left the company last week and two others bailed last month, Business Insider reported, meaning nine of the original 11 cofounders not named Musk have left the company since 2024. These most recent departures come after an exodus of about a dozen senior engineers.

The precipitous loss of talent has stalled the company’s biggest AI bet. “Macrohard,” its effort to build an AI agent capable of doing anything a white collar worker can do, has reportedly been put on “pause” in the past days as its leader, Toby Pohlen, left the company just weeks after being appointed to head the project.

While all the exits raise questions about the company’s future, Musk has downplayed the brain drain as part of a planned reorganization. Some employees are better suited for the early stage of a venture rather than the later stages, he said at an all-hands meeting last month, according to the New York Times.

Representatives for xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The xAI CEO is now looking to aggressively hire, albeit from an extremely limited pool of AI-focused workers. Already, the AI company has been able to poach two employees, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, from AI coding company Cursor, The Information reported.

These hires are key because of the potential growth in the coding tools market, which stood at $7.65 billion as of 2025 and is projected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2030. Cursor itself was valued at $29.3 billion after raising $2.3 billion in a funding round in November.

Despite this successful recruitment, Musk said he and a colleague are looking over rejected xAI applications to look for promising candidates.

“Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview @xAI. My apologies,” he wrote.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The war in Iran has sparked a global energy crisis that has rocked markets and sent oil prices surging to their highest level in four years. The chances of a quick resolution appear to be deteriorating as the conflict escalates, as do hopes that the U.S. economy might escape unscathed.

The war has effectively blocked off the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy corridor that links oil and gas producers in the Persian Gulf with the rest of the world. The closure has cut off the roughly 20 million barrels of oil that normally flow through the strait each day, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA estimates the conflict is removing roughly eight million barrels daily from the global supply, making the crisis the biggest oil supply disruption in history. Oil prices have been on a rollercoaster as a result. Brent crude, an international benchmark that cost around $70 a barrel before the war, grazed $120 last week and has since settled between $90 and $100. 

The swings have already caused gasoline prices for U.S. drivers to rise, but it might not be enough to force the severe downturn some economists have warned of. Price levels so far might only have a marginal impact on economic output over the long run, according to a report published Friday by Oxford Economics, an advisory firm. 

But that scenario rides on a relatively quick return to pre-war price levels over the next few months. The longer the strait remains closed and the higher prices rise, the faster the economic situation around the world—including in the U.S.—deteriorates.

Breaking parts of the economy

Oxford Economics uses a standard rule of thumb to estimate the economic impact of pricier oil: Every time oil gets $10 more expensive for a sustained period—determined to be around two months—it amounts to a 0.1% decline in GDP due to higher inflation and slower growth. If prices average $100 for two months, it would erase a few tenths of a percentage point of global GDP growth, but a recession would likely be avoided, according to the report.

The breaking point for the economy, Oxford Economics found, will be if oil prices average around $140 a barrel for two months. At that price, spillover effects would be much harder to contain, and many parts of the world would be flirting with economic decline.

“There are mild contractions in the Eurozone, the UK, and Japan, while the U.S. nears a temporary standstill and layoffs push up the unemployment rate, leaving it close to a recession,” the report’s authors wrote.

The problem with calculating the economic consequences of higher oil prices is that the implications are exponential. The more prices rise, the more knock-on effects could happen to hurt the economy. Higher-for-longer oil and transportation costs would begin to spill over into food and other goods, making inflation an across-the-board problem rather than a primarily fuel and energy-focused one. The Federal Reserve and other central banks would also be more inclined to tighten their interest rate policy if it became clear oil prices would remain high, dampening down economic activity. 

The final complication is more psychological. Sustained high oil prices could lead to a “deterioration in the collective psyche,” according to the report, as expectations of high prices become fixed among consumers. And in the car-dependent U.S., where consumers pay particularly close attention to gasoline prices, fuel inflation would risk crowding out households’ disposable income and lower spending elsewhere, also contributing to a slowdown.

Uncertain outcomes

Under this worst-case scenario, U.S. inflation would likely peak at around 5% in the second quarter of 2026, up from 2.4% currently, according to Oxford Economics’ modeling. This would be the highest inflation since March 2023. Such readings would likely push the Federal Reserve to adopt a more hawkish stance and potentially favor hiking rates this year. The Fed is likely to hold steady on rates this week, but the Iran conflict has also made many forecasters inclined to expect no cuts at all this year.

While the $140 scenario is a serious warning, Oxford Economics notes that the odds of this outcome remain low for now. A more plausible scenario, according to the authors, would be for oil prices to average around $100 per barrel, in line with where prices have fallen for most of the past few weeks. Much depends on when the conflict might wind down and the strait becomes safe to navigate again, allowing oil and natural gas exports to leave the Gulf once again. Trump administration officials recently said several weeks could still pass before hostilities subside.

Oil prices moderated on Monday on the back of several U.S. announcements signaling supply boosts, including the temporary loosening of sanctions targeting Russian oil exports, Iranian tankers receiving permission to leave the Gulf, and President Donald Trump’s pleas to other countries to help secure the strait. The IEA-coordinated release of 400 million barrels of global emergency oil reserves has also helped reassure markets with a limited buffer.

But oil prices have become accustomed to price swings during this war. Early in the conflict’s second week, after Trump wrote on Truth Social that higher oil prices were a “small price to pay” for achieving U.S. goals in Iran, oil prices jumped 25% overnight to just below $120 a barrel, before retreating later in the week.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

At Sunday night’s Oscars, fan-favorite Sinners struck gold and walked away with four wins. The horror film’s star Michael B. Jordan triumphed as best actor, and its director, Ryan Coogler, took home the award for best original screenplay. But just one decade before the $365 million worldwide box-office success was sweeping the awards ceremony, its director was drowning in student loans.

“I was 200 grand in debt for film school. It was bad,” Ryan Coogler revealed on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast last April. “We don’t come from no money.”

It was 2015, and Coogler was on the verge of breakout success—but his wallet didn’t show it. 

At the time, the director had already filmed the critically acclaimed film Fruitvale Station with Jordan. With the A-list actor as his muse, the budding filmmaker took on the tall task of creating a Rocky spinoff series, also starring Jordan: Creed. 

He began shooting the first movie in the series, which went on to make $42.6 million in its opening weekend on a $35 million budget. 

But the $200,000 in student loans from attending Southern California’s School of the Cinematic Arts was still burning a hole in his pocket. “I wasn’t making no money,” he added. 

How Ryan Coogler went from $200K in debt to a $25M net worth

The 39-year-old director’s win with Creed marked the first of many to come: Creed II and Creed III also shattered ticket sales expectations; Black Panther and its sequel Wakanda Forever did well over $2 billion at the worldwide box office; Judas and the Black Messiah was nominated many times for Golden Globes and Academy Awards; and four time Oscar-winner Sinners brought in at least $365 million at global box offices. 

While he didn’t confirm whether or not his student debt has been wiped clean yet, Coogler is far past worrying about his repayment plan.

After making some of the biggest superhero and sports films, his net worth is estimated at roughly $25 million. None of it may have ever happened if it weren’t for Coogler confiding in his girlfriend at the time—now wife—about how his creative-writing teacher recognized his potential as a screenwriter. 

“[My wife] bought me a screenwriting software, Final Draft,” Coogler said. “I found something that I really loved.”

The world’s most successful people often have rags-to-riches stories

Coogler’s start as a burgeoning creative riddled with debt isn’t an uncommon story. Some of the world’s most successful people have their own rags-to-riches story of how they managed to turn things around.

Queen of television Oprah Winfrey is known for her glitzy audience giveaways and sizable $3.2 billion net worth. She grew up in rural Mississippi in extreme poverty, raised by a single mother. Even when she discovered her passion for radio at just 17, she faced skepticism over her ability to anchor, deemed “unfit for television.” She was demoted from news to daytime TV—which actually proved to be a huge success for the media personality. Thus was born The Oprah Winfrey Show, which reeled in $300 million yearly during its peak. Winfrey later negotiated ownership of the series in 1986, solidifying that her run-ins with poverty would now be a thing of the past.

Do Won Chang, cofounder and CEO of Forever 21, also had rocky beginnings before finding major success. He and his wife, Jin Sook, immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea—their first jobs in L.A. being dishwashing for a coffee shop, and manning a gas station on the side. Chang noticed that most of the men driving the snazziest cars worked in the garment industry, so he took a job at a clothing store. That was the start of his $81 billion love connection with fashion.

“I came here with almost nothing,” Chang said in a 2016 interview with Forbes. “I’ll always have a grateful heart toward America for the opportunities that it’s provided me.”

Airbnb’s Brian Chesky is worth nearly $9.2 billion today—and it’s a far cry from nearly living on the streets back in his twenties. In 2007, Chesky had a problem: He didn’t have enough to cover rent. So he and his roommates hatched a plan that would inspire his empire. They turned their apartment into a bed-and-breakfast, blowing up air mattresses to accommodate guests. Now the CEO’s short-term rental company is worth $78 billion.

“We’re conditioned to avoid taking risks at all the wrong times. Right after college, we’re told to do the safe thing,” Chesky wrote for Fortune in 2014. “But that’s not how life works, and it’s the wrong way to think about risk. Inevitably, things change as you get older.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on April 28, 2025.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In nearly 100 years of Oscar history, only three women have ever been nominated for the Best Cinematography category. On Sunday night, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, director of photography for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, and the first Black woman ever recognized in the category, made all of them matter.

The win at the 98th Academy Awards was a long time coming, as is evidenced by the sheer lack of women in the field. Women made up just 7% of cinematographers on the top 250 films in 2025, according to San Diego State University’s annual Celluloid Ceiling report. Cinematography also consistently ranks among the lowest categories in terms of female representation across all of Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes roles. 

During her acceptance speech, Arkapaw recognized the weight of the history she was making: breaking a glass ceiling for women in filmmaking. 

“I really want all the women in the room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys,” she said. “I really, really, truly mean that. I have felt so much love from all the women on this whole campaign and gotten to meet so many people. And I just feel like moments like this happen because of you guys.”

A cinematographer, also known as a director of photography (DP), is the person responsible for capturing the visual look and feel of a film or TV production. They are essentially the bridge between the director’s creative vision and what actually appears on screen.

In the entire history of this Oscar category, only three women have ever been nominated before Arkapaw: Rachel Morrison for Mudbound in 2018, Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog in 2021, and Mandy Walker for Elvis in 2022. Arkapaw mentioned in her acceptance speech that she had personally met Morrison.

How Autumn Durald Arkapaw became an Oscar-winning cinematographer

Arkapaw was destined to be a creative. Born on Dec. 14, 1979, in Southern California of Filipino and African American Creole descent, she was raised by a single mom and her mother’s extensive Filipino family. They were “an artistic and talented bunch,” according to a profile of Arkapaw published by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. She found inspiration in her mother’s work as a photographer and in a large family photo album; she grew up taking pictures and making short films in iMovie.  

But she later majored in art history at Loyola Marymount University, believing her future was in curating art in New York. One genre film class changed her mind, though. When watching Broadway Danny Rose and Raging Bull on the big screen, it “opened up my mind to film in a new way,” she told Vogue in a September 2025 interview.

“I got excited, and I wanted to know how they were made, and who was behind the camera, and what their job meant,” she added. 

After graduating from LMU, she spent three years at AOL-Time Warner—but in a corporate advertising role. She spent weekends shooting an independent short film and eventually committed to a career in cinematography. The small budgets and limited resources she had early on “gave her the creative freedom and confidence that held her in great stead later when she took on large-scale work,” according to the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. She also enrolled in the American Film Institute, where she steadily built her career, even shooting music videos for artists including The Weeknd, Arcade Fire, and Solange, before breaking into feature films. 

“It sounds crazy now because there weren’t as many female cinematographers [at that time],” she told Vogue. “My parents didn’t even know what a cinematographer was. I’m about to quit a good job, go to film school instead, and end up owing the government lots of money?”

Meeting Ryan Coogler changed her career

Her collaboration with Coogler began with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022, and she later shot Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl in 2024 before working with Coogler again on Sinners. 

Arkapaw also broke technical barriers while shooting Sinners, becoming the first female photography director to shoot on large-format IMAX 65mm film. Sinners took home a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, and won four: Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score.

Arkapaw’s philosophy of success has always been rooted in self-belief.

“Believe in yourself more than anyone else,” she told Panavision. “If you have confidence in yourself and your ideas, you can achieve your goals. My mother always taught me I could achieve anything with hard work and belief.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The U.S. national debt is hurtling toward $39 trillion, but a Washington fiscal watchdog says the more alarming milestone isn’t a dollar figure—it’s a ratio. And it arrives in just five years.

According to a recent analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections show that by fiscal year 2031, the average interest rate paid on the federal debt will exceed the country’s rate of economic growth. In the dry shorthand of economists, “R will exceed G.” In plain terms, that means that the cost of borrowing will be growing faster than the economy’s ability to pay for it.​

“Once interest rates exceed the growth rate…primary deficits will lead debt to grow indefinitely,” the CRFB warned in a blog post published March 9.​

A guardrail, quietly disappearing

For most of the past 60 years—including all of the last 15—the U.S. has benefited from a structural cushion: interest rates on federal debt stayed below the pace of economic growth. That relationship, which economists measure as R<G, meant that even as the government ran persistent deficits, debt as a share of GDP could remain stable or even shrink. The economy, growing faster than the debt’s carrying cost, was effectively eroding the burden over time.​

Real interest rates on federal debt averaged just 0.9% over the past 15 years, while real GDP growth averaged 2.2%. That buffer is now evaporating, according to the CRFB.​

Since 2023, most newly issued Treasury debt has carried yields between 4% and 5%—rates that exceed the economy’s long-term expected growth rate. As older, cheaper debt matures and gets rolled over at these higher rates, the average interest cost on the entire federal debt stock is creeping upward. CBO now projects that by 2031, both R and G will hit roughly 3.8% nominally—and then diverge, with R pulling ahead.​

The spiral mechanism

The CRFB describes what comes next as a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Higher debt pushes interest rates up and slows economic growth. Slower growth reduces tax revenues. Reduced revenues widen deficits. Wider deficits add more debt. More debt pushes rates higher still. “Over time,” the group warns, “this could lead to accelerating growth in the debt, which could eventually be too rapid to correct, absent a major disruption or crisis.”​

Even CBO’s relatively optimistic “baseline” scenario—which does not model additional tax cuts or spending increases—projects the national debt will balloon to an unprecedented 175% of GDP by 2056. By that year, CBO estimates the interest rate will reach 4.2%, against a GDP growth rate of just 3.5%—a gap of 0.7 percentage points. Closing that gap alone, the CRFB calculates, would require roughly $2.7 trillion in annual spending cuts or tax increases—in 2056 alone.​

The political wildcard

The CRFB’s warning carries an implicit rebuke of Washington’s current fiscal trajectory. If lawmakers continue enacting tax cuts and spending increases—as they did in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which CBO estimates will add $4.7 trillion to deficits through 2035—the spiral “could arrive sooner and with greater intensity than projected.”​

The national debt is expected to cross $39 trillion within days, up more than $2.6 trillion in the past year alone. But as the CRFB makes clear, the real danger isn’t the next trillion. It’s the arithmetic of what happens when a country can no longer grow its way out of its debt—and the window to act before that moment closes in just five years.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The spike in oil prices was not a good look politically or economically for President Donald Trump after the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran, but the military campaign is going well, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Crude eased somewhat on Monday on signs that more tankers are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has virtually locked up after hitting commercial ships. That comes as Iran’s top source of leverage is fading.

“The war in Iran is currently in a phase in which the military trajectory is relatively positive: The United States is steadily destroying Iran’s ability to use its most essential tool in the war—drone and missile attacks—which in turn underpin the entire Iranian strategy,” ISW said in a report Sunday.

While Iran has inflicted significant damage to U.S. installations in the region and allied infrastructure, the pace of its attacks is plunging and hasn’t come close to its original plan for fighting off an existential threat to the regime with overwhelming retaliation, it pointed out.

For example, drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates collapsed from 332 on the second day of the war to just six on Sunday. Ballistic missile attacks fell from a peak of 137 on the first day to four yesterday.

The U.S.-Israeli bombardment has destroyed hundreds of Iranian launchers, and its missile force troops are reportedly demoralized, deserting, and refusing orders, according to ISW.

“Some individual drones have penetrated air defenses and caused politically unacceptable damage to oil infrastructure, but the overall trend in attacks is overwhelmingly positive,” it added.

There’s also little to no evidence the reduced pace of attacks is due to Iran keeping projectiles in reserve to be used later when the U.S. and Israel will have fewer interceptors, the report said.

Such a tactic would be a major gamble that assumes Iran will still have enough launchers left in the future. It also assumes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps retains enough command and control to execute that kind of coordination after the relentless targeting of its leadership.

ISW also noted the last Iranian attack on merchant shipping was on March 11, though it’s unclear whether that was due to less traffic in the Strait of Hormuz or the degradation of Iran’s military capabilities.

Of course, Iran’s plan was never to defeat the U.S. military, with the focus instead on causing political and economic pain, ISW said. Indeed, soaring crude prices have already made gasoline more expensive, threatening higher inflation and public backlash ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

Iran’s strategy rests on inflicting damage in the Gulf, disrupting shipping, activating proxies, committing terrorism, and launching cyber attacks.

“Iran has likely calculated that if these five prongs cause U.S. casualties, drive up oil prices, and impose economic costs on both the US and its Gulf allies, the United States and Israel would make a political decision to end the war without achieving their objectives,” the report said.

ISW expressed confidence the U.S. Navy can reopen the Strait of Hormuz, despite officials describing it as a “kill box” filled with potential threats, while adding “the risk-tolerance of the market will ultimately determine the length of the disruption in the Strait.”

Meanwhile, Trump has called on other countries to send warships to help escort tankers, even warning NATO failure to help him “will be very bad for the future” of the alliance. But so far, there are no takers.

Despite Iran suffering devastating losses on the battlefield, the burden is still on the U.S. to prevent Iran from using economic and political pressure to turn insignificant tactical moves into strategic successes, ISW warned. Still, Operation Epic Fury is working for now.

“The available evidence supports the assessment that the combined campaign is achieving its military objectives thus far but is not yet complete,” ISW said. “Declaring the campaign a failure at this stage is therefore premature. The collapse of Iranian drone and missile attacks—down significantly since Feb. 28—presents a compelling picture that the military campaign is degrading ballistic missile and drone capabilities.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a building is asking for leniency when she is sentenced Monday, saying she was a “scared and desperate mother” who was manipulated to keep the family business operating.

Carie Hallford, 48, faces up to 20 years in prison for taking over $130,000 from families for funeral services, including cremations, and often giving them urns full of concrete mix instead. In two cases, investigators found the wrong body was buried. In August, she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and admitted that she and her ex-husband Jon Hallford cheated customers and also defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic small business aid.

Carie Hallford decided to get a divorce after she was put back in jail in her state case in November 2024, which put her out of reach of her husband’s constant calls and texts and allowed the “fog in her mind from the years of abuse” to lift, according to a court filing by her lawyer, Robert Charles Melihercik.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommend prison time up to eight years since Carie Hallford didn’t have a criminal history. But lawyers for the government are asking U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang to sentence her to 15 years, in part for taking advantage of grieving people following one of the largest discoveries of decaying bodies at a funeral home in the U.S.

Families struggle with guilt, shame and nightmares

Those who entrusted their loved ones to the Hallfords struggled with guilt, shame, nightmares and panic attacks since the bodies were discovered in 2023. They were stacked so high in some places that they blocked doorways. There were bugs and maggots. Buckets had been placed to catch leaking fluids.

Prosecutors also want a longer sentence because the former couple, who had offered “green burials” without embalming, lavishly spent a pandemic-era small business loan on vehicles, cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co. and laser body sculpting rather than on their Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs.

Carie Hallford is asking to be sentenced to eight years. In court documents, Melihercik, said Hallford’s actions were motivated by “fear and severe anxiety.” He said Hallford’s former husband used “classic instruments of domestic violence” to control her, including threatening at times to kill himself and her.

The lawyer who represented Jon Hallford in state court, Adam Steigerwald, declined to comment on the abuse allegations. The lawyer who represented him in federal court, Laura Suelau, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Carie Hallford was the public face of the business

Some victims are not sympathetic to Carie Hallford, the public face of the business who met with families and assured them their loved ones would be treated with respect.

Emma Williams, whose family entrusted the Hallfords to take care of her father’s remains in 2022, said Carie Hallford had a choice.

“She continued to stay with the business and take advantage of us out her own greed,” she said.

Crystina Page, whose son’s body was left at the funeral home after he was killed in 2019, said Carie Hallford spent four years “feeding the monster” by continuing to accept more business.

“She is just as guilty as he is, except that he couldn’t have done it without her bringing him the bodies,” Page said.

Defense says a shorter sentence would allow for restitution

Carie Hallford says that much of the lavish spending of the government loan money was the result of “love-bombing” as Jon Hallford attempted to apologize to her. She urged her husband to buy a cremator with the loan money, but was too scared to force the issue, Melihercik said in the court filing.

“Although she will be behind bars for the next decade or more, she finally feels free,” Melihercik wrote. He also said a shorter sentence would allow Carie Hallford to be able to return to work and repay the money the couple took from their victims.

Carie Hallford is also facing 25 to 35 years in prison when she is sentenced in state court on related charges next month.

Jon and Carie Hallford each pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse in state court. The plea deals require their state and federal sentences to be served at the same time.

Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in the federal case and 40 years in the state case. At his sentencing last month in the state case, he apologized and said he will regret his actions for the rest of his life.

“I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I did not,” he said. “My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I did was wrong.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

AI isn’t just minting frontier model labs, it’s dragging forgotten venture sectors back into the game.

Healthtech, cybersecurity, biotech, and enterprise SaaS all saw a decisive pickup in early-stage activity in Q4 2025, driven by AI-native startups that look very different from the last cycle’s darlings, according to PitchBook’s latest Emerging Tech Indicator (ETI), which tracks pre-seed through Series B deals done by the top 15 VC firms globally.​

Healthtech is the clearest example of the shift. Health and wellness deals jumped to $678 million across 23 transactions in Q4, more than double the previous eight-quarter average of $332 million and 16 deals. The money is flowing into two buckets: consumer-facing “know your body” platforms and AI tools that make providers’ operations more efficient.​

Function Health, a subscription service that gives members access to a battery of lab tests and personalized insights, raised a $300 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation—an 11.5x step-up from its June 2024 Series A. On the enterprise side, Paradigm Health pulled in $78 million for clinical trial management software, while Valerie Health raised $30 million to automate front-office workflows with AI.​

Venture dollars are also returning to brick-and-mortar care, but with an AI angle. Radial Health, a network of mental health clinics, closed a $50 million Series A, and obesity-care chain Knownwell raised $26.1 million. Together, those deals suggest investors are moving away from popular telehealth bets and toward “AI plus services” models that plug into existing care infrastructure rather than trying to replace it.​

Aside from health and wellness, cybersecurity reached a new high. Cyber deals hit a record $643.1 million in Q4 across 15 transactions, with average valuations in the segment jumping to $273.4 million—more than double the previous eight-quarter average of $129.1 million. Ten of those 15 were Series A rounds.

Here, too, the deal list reads like a catalog of “AI + cyber” companies. 7AI raised a $130.6 million Series A for an autonomous threat-detection platform that continuously monitors digital environments. Vega Security secured $120 million for AI-powered threat detection and analytics, while Adaptive closed an $81 million Series B for generative AI–based threat simulations.

Biotech, long out of favor after the 2021 boom, also showed signs of life with deals climbing to 10 in Q4—the most since late 2022. Braveheart Bio raised $185 million in its first financing round to advance cardiovascular drugs licensed from China’s Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, while Expedition Therapeutics secured $165 million for a COPD therapy licensed from Fosun Pharma.​

Even enterprise SaaS—under fire in the public markets for sluggish growth and seat-based pricing—looked surprisingly lively in the emerging tech lens. Q4 SaaS activity reached $313.4 million across 19 deals, with 10 at the seed stage. PitchBook’s analysis argues that what’s getting funded now is “service as software”: products that deliver AI-powered outcomes, not just tools employees have to learn and adopt.​

Against the backdrop of a more cautious overall deal economy—and continued mega-bets on a handful of frontier labs—the ETI data suggests a narrower but sharper playbook at the top of the market. Health, cyber, biotech, and SaaS never truly disappeared from VC portfolios. Elite firms are now willing to lean back into them, so long as the pitch is less “another point solution” and more “AI-native system that moves real-world outcomes.”​

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

European countries on Monday demanded to know more about U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for the war on Iran and when the conflict might end as they weighed whether to agree to his call to send warships to help shore up security in the Persian Gulf.

Trump has asked allies — including France, China, Japan, South Korea and Britain — to help secure the strait for global shipping. He said the U.S. was talking to “about seven” countries for military support to help reopen the trade route. But he wouldn’t say which ones and gave no indication of when such a coalition might be formed.

Separately, in an interview with the Financial Times, he warned that “if there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

As European Union foreign ministers gathered to discuss Trump’s demand, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said it’s important for the United States and Israel to define “when they consider the military aims of their deployment to have been reached.”

“We need more clarity here,” Wadephul told reporters.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s spokesperson, Stefan Kornelius, said underlined “this war has nothing to do with NATO — it is not NATO’s war. NATO is an alliance to defend the alliance area.”

Kornelius said that Berlin “took note” of Trump’s comments, but he added: “The United States did not consult us before this war, and so we believe this is not a matter for NATO or the German government.”

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna also said that U.S. allies in Europe want to understand Trump’s “strategic goals. What will be the plan?”

Their reactions were typical of the cautious response that many in Europe have shown to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, although few allies in Europe have openly opposed it. Trump has described his demand for help in the strait as “a very small endeavor.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski invited the Trump administration to go through the proper channels.

“If there is a request via NATO, we will of course out of respect and sympathy for our American allies consider it very carefully,” he said. Sikorski made a reference to Article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty, which allies can invoke if they believe their territory or security is under threat.

‘Not be drawn into the wider war’

As she headed in to chair the meeting of ministers in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “it is in our interest to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and that’s why we are also discussing what we can do in this regard from the European side.”

Kallas said the EU could expand its Operation Aspides naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea up into the Persian Gulf. If no agreement is found among the 27 EU countries, those who stand ready to go it alone could form a “coalition of the willing” and provide military support on an ad hoc basis.

The war in Iran, sparked on Feb. 28 airstrikes by Israel and the U.S., has driven up energy prices worldwide, with brent crude up more than 40%. But the conflict has also disrupted the wider global supply chain beyond oil, affecting everything from pharmaceuticals from India, semiconductors from Asia and oil-derived products like fertilizers that come from the Middle East.

Cargo ships are stuck in the Gulf or making a much longer detour around the southern tip of Africa. Planes carrying air cargo out of the Middle East are grounded. And the longer the war drags on, the more likely that there will be shortages and price increases on a wide range of goods.

France has said it is working with countries — President Emmanuel Macron mentioned partners in Europe, India and Asia — on a possible international mission to escort ships through the strait but has stressed it must be when “the circumstances permit,” when fighting has subsided.

French senior officials, speaking anonymously on ongoing talks, said the Netherlands, Italy, and Greece had shown interest and that Spain might be involved in some way.

In London, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain “will not be drawn into the wider war, ” but that it is discussing with the U.S. and allies in Europe and the Gulf the possibility of using mine-hunting drones that the U.K. already has in the region. But he signaled that Britain is unlikely to dispatch a warship.

EU’s refugee concerns

Operation Aspides was formed to thwart attacks to shipping in the Red Sea by Somali pirates and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have yet to join the current fray. Saudi Aramco manages a pipeline network that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz to deliver oil to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu.

“If we want to have security in this region, then it would be easiest to actually already use the operation that we have in the region and maybe change a bit,” Kallas said. “There is also talk of coalition of the willing in this regard, but we also need to see what could be the fastest to provide this opening for the Strait of Hormuz, but of course, as you can see, it’s not easy.”

The EU is anxious that a potential refugee crisis in Iran will develop if the war continues.

“Although for now, the conflict has not translated into immediate migratory flows toward the EU, what the future holds remains unclear and necessitates the full mobilization of every migration diplomacy tool we have at our disposal,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement Sunday.

—-

Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jill Lawless in London, and Sylive Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

An offshore wind project targeted by the Trump administration has begun sending power to New England’s electric grid, the developer said Friday.

The Danish company Orsted said Revolution Wind is now generating power and will scale up in the weeks ahead until it is fully operational. Orsted is building Revolution Wind with Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables to provide electricity for Rhode Island and Connecticut, enough to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses.

Revolution Wind was one of five major East Coast offshore wind projects the Trump administration halted construction on days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt.

The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution.

But President Donald Trump, who often talks about his hatred of wind power, has said his goal is to not let any “windmills” be built. He has signed a spate of executive orders aimed at boosting oil, gas and coal.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Friday night that Trump “reversed course on Joe Biden’s costly green energy agenda that gave preferential treatment to intermittent, unreliable energy sources and instead is aggressively unleashing reliable and affordable energy sources to lower energy bills, improve our grid stability and protect our national security.” Rogers added in a statement to AP that the administration “looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue.”

Orsted said that at a time of growing energy demand, Revolution Wind will provide price certainty and stability, citing a preliminary analysis by the state of Connecticut that estimates it will lower wholesale energy costs by about $500 million per year by 2028.

“Revolution Wind is adding affordable, reliable American-made energy to New England’s grid, helping to meet growing energy demand and lower consumer costs,” Amanda Dasch, chief development officer at Orsted, said in a statement.

Chris Kearns, acting commissioner of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, called the first power milestone a “significant moment for the state’s clean energy landscape.”

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the Rhode Island coast. The wind farm has 65 of the 11-megawatt Siemens Gamesa turbines, and more than 1,000 people have been working on it.

Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat, said that because this wind energy is directly transmitted off the New England coast, “its price will not be at the mercy of uncertain global energy markets.” The Iran war is disrupting world energy supplies, the global economy and international travel.

Courtney also said Friday’s milestone “never would have happened without talented Connecticut building trades workers, who persevered through the Trump administration’s illegal halt work orders.”

The order in December was the second time the administration halted construction on Revolution Wind. Work was previously paused Aug. 22 over national security concerns. A month later a federal judge ruled the project could resume.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The United States’ war with Iran is entering its third week, but Congress has yet to publicly test the Trump administration’s case for the conflict.

Republicans in Congress have so far side-stepped public debate over the war, even as Senate Democrats reach for every tool at their disposal to demand hearings with Trump administration officials. Increasingly frustrated, Democrats are threatening this week to force a series of votes on the war, hoping that the effort to gum up the Senate’s voting schedule will prod Republicans to action.

“We’ve had no oversight whatsoever over what the executive is doing as we’re spending a billion dollars a day, and we have failed to have any real substantive debate or discussion,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

The role of Congress in the deliberations is an unsettled question with enormous stakes, given that lawmakers have the power to shape the trajectory of the conflict as it grows in cost and casualties. So far, 13 military members have been killed and billions of dollars have been spent, but President Donald Trump has not sought congressional approval for attacking Iran.

As the 17th day of the conflict dawned Monday, Republican lawmakers remained mostly resistant to the idea of quickly forcing public testimony before Congress.

How GOP leaders are handling calls for hearings

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters last week that he didn’t expect public hearings specifically on the Iran war, but noted it would inevitably come up in the regular rhythm of testimony on military policy and spending.

“They have briefed us,” Thune, R-S.D., said, pointing to classified briefings from the Trump administration. Those sessions have been held behind closed doors and most lawmakers refuse to disclose more than the broad topics of discussion.

Thune also noted there have been regular news conferences from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are “answering the hard questions that are being asked,” Thune said.

The GOP chairs of committees dealing with national security have also said they don’t have plans in the near term to hold hearings specifically on the war, though some acknowledged the value of lawmaker questioning.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the regular run of hearings on Capitol Hill would provide lawmakers with plentiful opportunities to ask questions.

“We’re going to conduct generous oversight, thorough oversight,” said Wicker, R-Miss.

Some Republicans are looking ahead to an expected supplemental budget request from the Trump administration to cover the costs of the war. That request, however, is likely weeks away and faces a difficult path through Congress.

Democrats have pointed out that the Pentagon has already received additional funding from Republicans’ marquee tax cut law that was passed last year and provided funding for GOP priorities, including at the Pentagon.

Wariness growing from some Republicans

Still, agitation from a few Republicans at the lack of high-level responses from the Trump administration is starting to show, especially as they brace for a hefty war bill from the administration.

“I don’t want to just be given the invoice from the Department of Defense, saying this is what it’s going to cost,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “I want them to be engaged with us.”

She added that it was important for lawmakers to get information both in classified briefings and public hearings “so that the public can better understand this, too.”

Another GOP senator on the powerful Appropriations Committee, Louisiana’s John Kennedy, exited a classified briefing last week fuming that it had been a “total waste of time” because the officials were not able to provide the answers that top-level Cabinet officials could.

Republicans have almost uniformly backed Trump’s decision to launch an attack on Iran, though many are wary of a lengthy conflict. Trump has cycled through different objectives for the war, ranging from crippling Iran’s military capabilities to a demand for “unconditional surrender.”

“I think we have to let the objective play out as far as we can, and if then the effort gets murky on how to get to the objective, that might be a good time to have some hearings, but it’s too early,” said Sen. Cynthis Lummis, a Wyoming Republican.

But as the midterm elections approach, Republicans are also aware that public support for the war remains tepid.

“I wish we could disclose a lot of this publicly because it would make it a whole lot easier to explain to the American people,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., adding that classified briefings were necessary to protect U.S. service members now that the war is under way.

How Democrats may force a debate

Democrats, meanwhile, are threatening to do just about everything in their power to bring attention to the war, even if it means repeatedly forcing votes that fail.

A group of six Democrats has said that unless hearings are scheduled with Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Cabinet officials, they will call up daily votes on a series of war powers resolutions that if passed would require Trump to gain congressional approval before carrying out any more attacks on Iran. Similar resolutions have already been rejected by both chambers in the Republican-controlled Congress.

The votes, however, would eat up valuable time on the Senate floor and set the ground for a debate on the conflict just as Senate Republicans plan to spend much of the week trying to pass Trump’s priority legislation to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting.

The group of Democratic senators also hinted at using other tactics to slow the Senate’s work on other business.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters that unless there is a commitment for public hearings, “We’re not going to let the Senate go on with business as usual. We’re not going to let the Senate be silenced.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Advanced technology isn’t just automating tasks in the white collar world—AI agents and robots are flipping burgers, stocking warehouses, and even doing household chores. Driverless taxis have also entered the mainstream, despite job loss fears from gig workers. But the leader of autonomous vehicle (AV) business Waymo insists the tech isn’t taking human work. 

“Now that we’ve been in a few markets for a few years, it’s great to be able to see that we haven’t eliminated jobs in those markets,” Waymo’s co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, recently told The New York Times.

The $126 billion behemoth of industry, which started out as Google’s self-driving car project, has understandably raised eyebrows from human drivers. It’s the largest AV company in the U.S., serving at least 10 cities with around 3,000 robotaxis and counting. And as more companies including Tesla and Amazon-owned Zoox enter the arena, ride-hailing workers are put on edge. 

Even the CEO of Uber himself believes that most of his company’s rides could have a robot behind the wheel in the next couple of decades.

Humans will be needed to rotate tires and operate fleets in the era of self-driving cars

Waymo’s co-CEO says the shift to driverless will open up new jobs. Instead of being in the driver’s seat, humans will be behind the scenes of the whole operation, fulfilling operational and blue-collar business needs. 

And to support the workforce of the future, Waymo is funding tuition scholarships for U.S. technicians, and partnered with Bronx Community College in creating an automotive technology program.

“Humans are still rotating those tires and working on those vehicles,” Mawakana continued. “We have fleet operators, we have fleet technicians. All of our fleets are fully electric. Those charging companies are building the infrastructure, putting them in city centers, pulling those wires from the utility company.”

Justin Kintz, the global head of public policy at Waymo, tells Fortune that the business’ investments in infrastructure and growing services “create opportunities for Americans of all backgrounds, by bringing a wide variety of new, non-college and trades-work roles to communities around the U.S.”

Robotaxis will have an impact on human drivers—but will strengthen blue-collar work

Automated cars are on the rise, much to the dismay of human drivers and passengers who get stuck navigating the errors of the new technology. 

It’s projected that the U.S. robotaxi market will grow from 1,500 in 2025 to around 35,000 in 2030—around a 90% compounded annual growth rate, according to a 2025 Goldman Sachs report. The automated services could account for 8% of the total American ride-share market in just a few short years.

It’s only natural for drivers to fear for their future careers, especially as they see AI gut company workforces and swipe the jobs of thousands of white-collar employees. About 85% of people believe that the rollout of driverless cars will lead to job losses, and another 70% felt unsure of the technology or that it’s a bad idea for society, according to a recent University of California San Diego analysis of Pew Research Center data. 

And industry leaders like Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi have sounded the alarm that the majority of the business’ trips will be “fulfilled by robots of some kind” within 20 years. However, when one door closes, another one opens. 

It’s projected that in deploying 9 million AVs over the next 15 years, more than 114,000 new jobs in AV production, distribution, maintenance, upgrades, and repairs will be created, according to a 2024 study from Chamber of Progress. Humans won’t be totally left out of the process; companies will need about 190 workers to manufacture and service the cars, for every 1,000 AV created and deployed each year.

The co-founder and CEO of $15.2 billion “super-app” company Grab, Anthony Tan, announced it would be rolling out robobuses in its headquarter city of Singapore this year. But in lockstep with making a large investment in driverless technologies, the business is also considering how to upskill human drivers in the shift. And just like Waymo, the company recognized a few work opportunities for people, including vehicle maintenance and data analysis. 

“We see new kinds of jobs emerging,” Tan said in a 2025 Q&A with analysts. For example, drivers could be remote safety drivers, data labelers; they could change LiDARs, cameras, and so forth.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today, the economy of the country has edged past Switzerland to become the world’s 20th largest with more than $1 trillion in annual output.

It’s a historic leap from the post-Communist ruins of 1989-90 to European growth champion, which economists say has lessons on how to bring prosperity to ordinary people — and that the Trump administration says should be recognized by Poland’s presence at a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies later this year.

The transformation is reflected in people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a city of around 500,000 people midway between Berlin and Warsaw. She returned home after five years in the U.S.

“I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”

Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.

Kowalska worked for Microsoft in the U.S. after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology, in a job she saw as a “dream come true.”

But she missed having a “sense of mission,” she said.

“Especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the technology started developing so rapidly in Poland,” Kowalska said. “So it was very tempting to come back.”

Breaking out of poverty

The guest invitation to the G20 summit is mostly symbolic. No guest country has been promoted to full member since the original G20 met at the finance minister level in 1999, and that would take a consensus decision of all the members. Moreover, the original countries were chosen not just by gross domestic product rank, but by their “systemic significance” in the global economy.

But the gesture reflects a statistical truth: In 35 years — a little less than one person’s working lifetime — Poland’s per capita GDP rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average. That’s up from $6,730 in 1990, or 38% of the EU average and now roughly equal to Japan’s $52,039, according to International Monetary Fund figures measured in today’s dollars and adjusted for Poland’s lower cost of living.

Poland’s economy has grown an average 3.8% a year since joining the EU in 2004, easily beating the European average of 1.8%.

It wasn’t simply one factor that helped Poland break out of the poverty trap, says Marcin Piątkowski of Warsaw’s Kozminski University and author of a book on the country’s economic rise.

One of the most important factors was rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business, he said. That included independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit.

As a result, the economy wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world.

Poland also benefited from billions of euros in EU aid, both before and after it joined the bloc in 2004 and gained access to its huge single market.

Above all, there was the broad consensus, from across the political spectrum, that Poland’s long-term goal was joining the EU.

“Poles knew where they were going,” Piątkowski said. “Poland downloaded the institutions and the rules of the game, and even some cultural norms that the West spent 500 years developing.”

As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.

“Young Poles are, for instance, better educated than young Germans,” Piatkowski said, but earn half what Germans do. That’s “an unbeatable combination” for attracting investors, he said.

Success of an electric bus company

Solaris, a company founded in 1996 in Poznan by Krzysztof Olszewski, is one of the leading manufacturers of electric buses in Europe with a market share of around 15%. Its story shows one hallmark of Poland’s success: entrepreneurship, or the willingness to take risks and build something new.

Educated as an engineer under the Communist government, Olszewski opened a car repair shop where he used spare parts from West Germany to fix Polish cars. While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate, according to Katarzyna Szarzec, an economist at the Poznan University of Economics and Business.

“These were enclaves of private entrepreneurship,” she said.

In 1996, Olszewski opened a subsidiary of the German bus company Neoplan and started producing for the Polish market.

“Poland’s entry to the EU in 2004 gave us credibility and access to a vast, open European market with the free movement of goods, services and people,” said Mateusz Figaszewski, responsible for institutional relations.

Then came a risky decision to start producing electric buses in 2011, a time when few in Europe were experimenting with the technology. Figaszewski said larger companies in the West had more to lose if switching to electric vehicles didn’t work out.

“It became an opportunity to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market,” he said.

An aging population

Challenges still remain for Poland. Due to a low birth rate and an aging society, fewer workers will be able to support retirees. Average wages are lower than the EU average. While small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.

Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak sees domestic innovation as a third wave in Poland’s postsocialist economic development. In the first wave, foreign countries opened factories in Poland in the early 1990s, taking advantage of a skilled local population.

Around the turn of the millennium, he said, Western companies brought more advanced branches, including finance, information technology and engineering.

“Now it’s the time to start such sophisticated activities here,” Jaśkowiak says, adding that one of his main priorities is investing in universities.

“There is still much to do when it comes to innovation and technological progress,” added Szarzec, the Poznan economist. “But we keep climbing up on that ladder of added value. We’re no longer just a supplier of spare parts.”

Szarzec’s students say more needs to be done to reduce urban-rural inequalities, make housing affordable and support young people starting families. They say Poles need to acknowledge that immigrants, such as the millions of Ukrainians who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, contribute to economic development in an aging population.

“Poland has such a dynamic economy, with so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying,” said Kazimierz Falak, 27, one of Szarzec’s graduate students. “Poland is promising.”

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David McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Construction is finished on a major Massachusetts offshore wind farm, the first project to reach this stage during President Donald Trump’s time in office.

Offshore construction was completed Friday night on Vineyard Wind with the installation of the final blades, Craig Gilvarg, a spokesperson for the project, said Saturday.

Trump, who often talks about his hatred of wind power, has said his goal is to not let any “windmills” be built. Vineyard Wind was one of five major East Coast offshore wind projects the Trump administration halted construction on days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt.

Another one of the five, Revolution Wind, began sending power for the first time to New England’s electric grid on Friday and will scale up in the weeks ahead until it is fully operational.

While Revolution Wind just began delivering power, Vineyard Wind has been doing so for over a year as more turbines were finished. Vineyard Wind is a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, located 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts. It has 62 turbines that will generate a total of 800 megawatts. That is enough clean electricity to power about 400,000 homes.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has said the completion of this project is essential to ensuring the state can lower costs, meet rising energy demand, advance its climate goals and sustain thousands of good-paying jobs.

The Trump administration has been particularly critical of the Vineyard Wind project because of a blade failure. Fiberglass fragments of a blade broke apart and began washing onto Nantucket beaches in July 2024 during the peak of tourist season. Manufacturer GE Vernova agreed to pay $10.5 million in a settlement to compensate island businesses that suffered losses.

Vineyard Wind submitted state and federal project plans to build an offshore wind farm in 2017. Massachusetts had committed to offshore wind by requiring its utilities to solicit proposals for up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2027. In what might have been a fatal blow, federal regulators delayed Vineyard Wind by holding off on issuing a key environmental impact statement in 2019. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Keating said at the time the Trump administration was trying to stymie the renewable energy project just as it was coming to fruition.

The Biden administration signed off on it in 2021, as it sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution. Construction began onshore in Barnstable, Massachusetts.

The first U.S. offshore wind farm opened off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016, at the end of President Barack Obama’s tenure. But with just five turbines, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm. The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm officially opened in March 2024, when President Joe Biden was in office. Danish wind energy developer Orsted and the utility Eversource built that 12-turbine wind farm, called South Fork Wind, 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York.

Trump began reversing the country’s energy policies his first day in office with a spate of executive orders aimed at boosting oil, gas and coal. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Friday night that Trump “reversed course on Joe Biden’s costly green energy agenda that gave preferential treatment to intermittent, unreliable energy sources and instead is aggressively unleashing reliable and affordable energy sources to lower energy bills, improve our grid stability and protect our national security.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A haunting whale song discovered on decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how the huge animals communicate, according to researchers who say it’s the oldest such recording known.

The song is that of a humpback whale, a marine giant beloved by whale watchers for its docile nature and spectacular leaps from the water, and was recorded by scientists in March 1949 in Bermuda, said researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Just as significant is the sound of the surrounding ocean itself, said Peter Tyack, a marine bioacoustician and emeritus research scholar at Woods Hole. The ocean of the late 1940s was much quieter than the ocean of today, providing a different backdrop than scientists are used to hearing for whale song, he said.

The recovered recordings “not only allow us to follow whale sounds, but they also tell us what the ocean soundscape was like in the late 1940s,” Tyack said. “That’s very difficult to reconstruct otherwise.”

A preserved recording from the 1940s can also help scientists better understand how new human-made sounds, such as increased shipping noise, affect the way whales communicate, Tyack said. Research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that whales can vary their calling behavior depending on noises in their environment.

The recording predates scientist Roger Payne’s discovery of whale song by nearly 20 years. Woods Hole scientists on a research vessel at the time were testing sonar systems and performing acoustic experiments along with the U.S. Office of Naval Research when they captured the sound, said Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole.

The scientists didn’t know what they were hearing, but they decided to record and save the sounds anyway, Jester said.

“And they were curious. And so they kept this recorder running, and they even made time to make recordings where they weren’t making any noise from their ships on purpose just to hear as much as they could,” said Jester. “And they kept these recordings.”

Woods Hole scientists discovered the song while digitizing old audio recordings last year. The recording was on a well-preserved disc created by a Gray Audograph, a kind of dictation machine used in the 1940s. Jester located the disc.

While the early underwater recording equipment used to capture the sound would be considered crude by today’s standards, it was cutting-edge at the time, Jester said. And the fact that the sound is recorded on a plastic disc is significant because most recordings of the time were on tape, which has long since deteriorated, she said.

Whales’ sound-making ability is critical to their survival and key to how they socialize and communicate. The sounds come in the form of clicks, whistles and calls, according to NOAA scientists who study them.

The sounds also allow the whales to find food, navigate, locate each other and understand their surroundings in the vast ocean, scientists say. Several species make repetitive sounds that resemble songs. Humpback whales, which can weigh more than 55,000 pounds (24,947 kilograms), are the ocean’s most renowned singers, capable of complex vocalizations that can sound ethereal or even mournful.

The discovery of long-lost whale song from a quieter ocean could be a jumping-off point to better understanding the sounds the animals make today, said Hansen Johnson, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.

“And, you know, it’s just beautiful to listen to and has really inspired a lot of people to be curious about the ocean, and care about ocean life in general,” said Johnson, who was not involved in the research. “It’s pretty special.”

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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Pixar’s “Hoppers” held onto the top slot at the box office, bouncing back with $28.5 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, while Colleen Hoover’s “Reminders of Him” added to the author’s successful streak at the box office.

After its $45.3 million debut, The Walt Disney Co.’s “Hoppers” release dipped a modest 37% in its follow-up weekend, a promising sign for an animated movie hoping to have strong legs through March. The Pixar original, about a young woman who transforms into the body of a beaver to help defend a pond from development, is hoping to keep attracting audiences with good reviews (94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and strong audience scores (an “A” CinemaScore).

While many of Pixar’s sequels have been blockbusters on arrival — like 2024’s “Inside Out 2” ($1.7 billion worldwide) — their originals have recently needed time to get going. In 2023, “Elemental” launched with a disappointing $29.6 million but went on to gross a hefty $496.4 million globally.

“Hoppers,” which has taken in $164.7 million globally thus far, has a long way to go to match that, but it’s off to a good start. It faced little direct new competition this weekend. The upcoming Amazon MGM sci-fi adventure “Project Hail Mary,” however, will soon take up IMAX screens and compete for family moviegoers.

Universal’s “Reminders of Him” debuted in second place this weekend with a better-than-expected $18.3 million. The film, starring Maika Monroe as a woman attempting to rebuild her life after prison, is the third Colleen Hoover adaptation to reach the big screen, following 2024’s “It Ends With Us” ($351 million worldwide for Sony) and 2025’s “Regretting You” ($91 million for Paramount).

“Reminders of Him,” which cost about $25 million to make, got poor reviews (56% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and notched a not-great “B” CinemaScore with audiences. But the film, the first from a screenplay co-written by Hoover, extends the bestselling author’s popularity with moviegoers.

“ Undertone,” a micro-budget horror movie from A24, opened with $9.3 million. The film, written and directed by Ian Tuason, has been touted as A24’s best horror film since Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” (2018), one of the movies that helped put the indie studio on the map. With a budget of just $500,000, “Undertone” makes particular use of sound design in a one-setting tale about a paranormal podcaster (Nina Kiri) caring for her dying mother.

After its disappointing debut, Warner Bros. “The Bride!” plummeted in its second weekend, dropping 70% with just $2.1 million. The Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed riff on “The Bride of Frankenstein” cost about $80-90 million to produce, but so far has grossed just $11.3 million domestically.

Oscar weekend is often slow in theaters, with the industry’s attention largely focused on Sunday’s Academy Awards. But the trio of moderate successes in “Hoppers,” “Reminders of Him” and “Undertone” lifted moviegoing ahead of Hollywood’s biggest night. Year-to-date ticket sales are up 15.2% from the same point last year, according to Comscore.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Hoppers,” $28.5 million.

2. “Reminders of Him,” $18.3 million.

3. “Undertone,” $9.3 million.

4. “Scream 7,” $8.4 million.

5. “Goat,” $4.7 million.

6. “The Bride!” $2.1 million.

7. “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” $1.7 million.

8. “Wuthering Heights,” $1.7 million.

9. “TMNT II,” $1.5 million.

10. “Crime 101,” $1.1 million.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

For Gen Z, navigating today’s job market can feel daunting—especially as artificial intelligence threatens to upend the very idea of work. But according to Melinda French Gates, that uncertainty is exactly where growth begins.

The billionaire philanthropist said that learning to embrace transitions is the key to personal and professional development.

“If we pause and if we give ourselves time to learn, we can actually grow tremendously during those transitions, whether they’re easy or whether they’re hard,” she said on Bloomberg’s Leaders with Francine Lacqua podcast.

And for new graduates in particular, the 61-year-old said there’s one question that cuts to the heart of it:

“I even tell university graduates these days, you think the transition is when you go through graduation? No, it’s when you wake up the next day and you’re saying, ‘Am I really on the way to where I want to go?’”

It’s a question many Gen Zers are already grappling with as traditional career ladders grow less stable. Early in their careers, young workers are moving on quickly: The average job tenure during the first five years of employment is just 1.1 years, according to recruitment company Randstad. That’s a sharp contrast to earlier generations. Gen Xers and baby boomers typically stayed in their early roles for closer to three years—suggesting today’s young workers are reevaluating their career paths far sooner.

Melinda French Gates’s first post-grad job wasn’t going as planned—but instead of quitting, she embraced the challenge

Learning to question major transitions is something French Gates said she learned early in her career—starting with her first post-grad job. After earning her bachelor’s degree in computer science and her MBA from Duke University, she spent nine years at Microsoft. 

“There weren’t very many women at the time, and it was a rough-and-tumble world. Tech is still pretty tough. It was the boys’ debate society,” she recalled to Bloomberg. “And I thought, ‘okay, I can rise up, I can play this game.’ And I did play the game and I did quite well—I was moving up the ranks in the company.”

But around the two-year mark, doubts crept in: “I realized I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like how I was treating people outside of work, because I was treating them the same way I was treating people inside of work, which was the game we had to play. And I thought, no, this isn’t right for me.”

It’s a realization many young workers may recognize today. As Gen Z switches jobs more frequently than previous generations, questions about culture and values are surfacing earlier in careers. French Gates’ experience speaks to why: when the culture doesn’t match your values, no amount of upward momentum feels like enough. 

But rather than quit and seek opportunities elsewhere, she decided to try something different: shifting her approach to work.

“I thought, ‘okay, before I leave, I will try—inside this company—being who I truly am,’” she said. “And to my surprise, I did not fall flat on my face. I actually rose in the company, and people came to work under me in my division who wanted that type of leadership. And I thought, ‘oh, this can work. There’s no reason for me to be somebody else—be myself.’”

It’s a realization, she said, that often only comes once you’re in the thick of it—but once you are, it’s worth sitting with.

“I don’t think it’s until you get to the next day that you can really, at least for me, start to process the transition and where you are,” French Gates added. “And this is really the heart of what leadership is also like.”

Lisa Su and Julie Sweet agree with Melinda French Gates: embrace hard times—and you’ll find success on the other side

French Gates isn’t alone in her view that leaning into discomfort is one of the surest paths forward. Some of the world’s most successful executives agree.

Lisa Su, CEO of semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) put it bluntly in a commencement address to graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last year: “Run towards the hardest problems—not walk, run—and that’s where you find the biggest opportunities, where you learn the most, where you set yourself apart, and most importantly, where you grow.”

“When you choose the hardest challenges,” she added, “you choose the fastest path to growth and the greatest chance to make a difference.”

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has a reminder of that mantra in her home, with a plaque stating: “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”

“I look at it every day when I think about where I need to take our company, and where I need to continue to learn as a company,” Sweet said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Riyadh last year.

“So I hope for all of you that your dreams scare you, because that means you’re going to make the impact that I know you can.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96.

Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich.

Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume “Theory of Communicative Action.”

Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of a new era in 1945 and his coming to terms with the reality of Nazi crimes as something without which he wouldn’t have found his way into philosophy and social theory. He recalled that “you saw suddenly that it was a politically criminal system in which you had lived.”

He had an ambivalent relationship with the left-wing student movement of the late 1960s in Germany and beyond, engaging with it but also warning at the time against the danger of what he called “left-wing fascism” — a reaction to a firebrand speech by a student leader that he later said was “slightly out of place.” He would later recognize the movement as having driven a “fundamental liberalization” of German society.

In the 1980s, Habermas was a prominent figure in the so-called Historians’ Dispute, in which Berlin historian Ernst Nolte and others called for a new perspective on the Third Reich and German identity. They tended to compare what happened under Adolf Hitler to atrocities carried out by other governments, such as the deaths of millions in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Habermas and other opponents contended that the conservative historians were trying to lessen the magnitude of Nazi crimes through such comparisons.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “Germany and Europe have lost one of the most significant thinkers of our time.”

Germany’s center-right leader said that “his sociological and philosophical work had an impact on generations of researchers and thinkers.” Merz praised “Habermas’ intellectual forcefulness and his liberality” and said in a statement that “his voice will be missed.”

Habermas supported the rise to power of center-left Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 1998. He was critical of the “technocratic” approach and perceived lack of political vision of Schröder’s conservative successor, Angela Merkel, complaining in 2016 of the paralyzing effects on public opinion of “the foam blanket of Merkel’s policy of sending people to sleep.”

He was particularly critical of the “limited interest” shown by German politicians, business leaders and media in “shaping a politically effective Europe.” In 2017, he praised newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron for laying out of plans for European reform, saying that “the way he speaks about Europe makes a difference.”

Habermas was born on June 18, 1929, in Duesseldorf and grew up in nearby Gummersbach, where his father headed the local chamber of commerce. He became a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk, a section of the Hitler Youth for younger boys, at 10.

He was born with a cleft palate that required repeated operations as a child, an experience that helped inform his later thinking about language.

Habermas said he had experienced the importance of spoken language as “a layer of commonality without which we as individuals cannot exist” and recalled struggling to make himself understood. He also spoke of the “superiority of the written word,” and said that “the written form conceals the flaws of the oral.”

His wife, Ute Habermas-Wesselhoeft, died last year. The couple had three children: Tilmann; Rebekka, who died in 2023; and Judith.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The CEOs of the nation’s top airline companies, including American, Delta, Southwest and JetBlue, are imploring Congress to restore funding to the Department of Homeland Security and embrace a bipartisan solution to pay federal aviation workers including airport security officers during the partial government shutdown.

“Once again, air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown,” the executives wrote in an open letter to Congress that was published Sunday online and in The Washington Post.

The letter, which was also signed by the CEOs of the cargo companies UPS, FedEx and Atlas Air, said that Congress should pass the Aviation Funding Solvency Act and the Aviation Funding Stability Act, which would guarantee air traffic controllers are paid regardless of the government’s funding status, as well as the Keep America Flying Act. That measure would offer the same protections to Transportation Security Administration officers tasked to provide security and to screen all travelers.

”It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put food on the table, put gas in the car and pay rent when you are not getting paid,” the letter said.

The current partial shutdown affects only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA. Democrats in Congress refused to fund the department over objections to its immigration enforcement tactics. The lapse marks the third shutdown in less than a year to leave TSA workers temporarily without pay — and once the government reopens, to have to wait for back pay.

Democratic lawmakers have said DHS won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The CEOs noted that with spring break in full swing, FIFA’s World Cup 2026 approaching and celebrations for America’s 250th birthday throughout the year, the stakes are high. The letter said that U.S. airlines expect 171 million passengers this spring season.

As the latest partial shutdown drags on, there have been long security lines at a growing number of U.S airports.

The TSA and Homeland Security have consistently blamed Democrats for the long security lines.

Homeland Security posted on its X account last week that more than 300 TSA agents have quit since the start of the shutdown.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com