Luke Vargas

as Congress ends another week no closer to resolving a partial government shutdown.

While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S.

has now damaged or destroyed more than 120 Iranian naval vessels, experts say that the mission could take weeks to show results.

It's Friday, March 20th.

I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal.

And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

Adding urgency to the mission is a new projection from Saudi officials that oil prices could top $180 a barrel if disruption to the region's energy supplies continues into next month.

The U.S.

military is scaling up efforts to try and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Blue Origin has formally entered the race to develop AI data centers in space, following Elon Musk's SpaceX and startup StarCloud.

We report that the operation involves attacking Iranian naval vessels with low-flying jets and hunting drones with Apache helicopters, an effort meant to clear away a web of Iranian assets that have harassed traffic through the maritime chokepoint.

In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Jeff Bezos' company said it's seeking permission to deploy more than 50,000 solar-powered satellites in order to meet growing demand for AI computing.

While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the U.S.

has now damaged or destroyed more than 120 Iranian naval vessels, experts say the mission could take weeks to show results, with Iran still believed to have a vast stockpile of mines and hundreds of undamaged boats stored in tunnels along its coast and on islands.

The company says the effort, known as Project Sunrise, would allow it to operate in an environment free from the red tape that's complicated the development of terrestrial facilities.

And we're exclusively reporting that OpenAI plans to bring together ChatGPT and its coding platform Codex into a desktop super app.

Well, adding urgency to that mission is a new projection from Saudi officials that oil prices could top $180 a barrel if disruption to the region's energy supplies continues late into next month.

Executives at OpenAI say the shift aims to simplify the user experience following a year of work on standalone products that didn't always resonate with users, as the company aims to beat back the success of rival Anthropic.

We report it's not an outcome the kingdom wants, with prices that high potentially leading consumers to slash oil use, triggering a recession, or casting Saudi Arabia as profiteering off of the war.

Asian stocks have end-of-the-day mixed.