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Chapter 1: What happened in the recent U.S. Air Force plane crash in Iraq?
Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.
Inflation is killing me. But who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. See?
Banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources they need.
While increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they?
Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores. Paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition. Iran and the U.S. intensify their war rhetoric yet again. Plus, TikTok's parent company gets access to NVIDIA's top AI chips as it pushes a global expansion.
They've struggled to acquire the amount of compute they need in order to push at the frontiers of AI. And NVIDIA's Blackwells are top chips and they're after them.
And U.S. employers stare down the biggest annual jump in health insurance costs in a decade and a half. We'll look at how they plan to cope. It's Friday, March 13th. 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. The U.S. is easing sanctions on Russian oil.
In a move that's designed to boost supply and ease price pressures, countries will be allowed to purchase Russian oil that's already at sea until April 11th. I asked journal correspondent Thomas Grove what to make of the policy shift.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said in a post on X that the sanctions exemption is a narrowly tailored short-term measure. And he says that it shouldn't provide a lot of economic benefit to Russia in the long term. This certainly shows us that the priority in Washington is to make sure that there's enough oil on the market to keep prices low.
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Chapter 2: How are U.S. and Iranian officials escalating their war rhetoric?
National security official Ali Larajani said yesterday that, quote, starting a war is easy, but ending it won't happen with a few tweets. We will not let off you until you accept your mistake and pay the price for it, end quote. Well, as the U.S.
and Iran appear to be sticking to their war goals, the journal's Anat Peled told us that Israel is for the first time publicly acknowledging that regime change in Iran may be unlikely.
So President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began this conflict, calling on Iranians to take control of their country in speeches on the very first day. But since then, we've seen changing messaging. We've seen that in the U.S., when U.S. officials have increasingly focused on narrower goals of destroying the country's military capabilities.
Now we're seeing a shifting tone in Israel. I think that was most clear in a speech that Netanyahu gave yesterday. It was his first press conference where he took questions since the start of the war. And he basically said that he couldn't commit to the idea that Iranians would be able to topple the regime.
And what we understand now is that Israeli officials basically think that the conditions are not ripe. on the ground yet for regime change. We understand also that people are very scared in Iran. The security forces are present on the streets. There's threats. There's just a lot of fear. So it doesn't seem like this is the moment to go for that.
Anat, if Israel is sort of backing off of that immediate regime change goal and protesters aren't flooding the streets just yet, is there a risk that Israel and the U.S. kind of begin to break rank in their desire to press the fight here?
We are seeing differences that are emerging between the two countries. So we saw this very clearly in a set of strikes on oil depots that Israel conducted. And even though the U.S. was notified in advance, it told Israel not to do this again unless it was approved by Washington. And that made it very clear that there are differences despite very close military coordination.
However, what I'm being told from Israeli officials is that it's very likely that Trump could end this war at any moment. He can be unpredictable, as we know, and Israel is fighting as if every day is the last.
And yeah, they do have plans, at least on the Israeli side, to continue to kind of go and degrade the regime even after the war is over through other means, such as economic means and covert operations.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the U.S. easing sanctions on Russian oil?
The euro, meanwhile, is at a seven-month low. The U.K. economy stalled unexpectedly in January, a worrying sign as the global energy crisis threatens to strain household budgets. The country's budget watchdog earlier this month forecast yearly growth of just 1.1 percent, a slowdown from 2025.
Apple is lowering the fees for digital sales in its Chinese App Store from 30 to 25 percent, a move designed to defuse a regulatory showdown in its top overseas market. Despite the change, China remains one of Apple's priciest jurisdictions for consumers and developers.
And TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance is assembling computing power with high-end NVIDIA chips outside of China, circumventing U.S. export restrictions. We've learned that ByteDance is working with a Southeast Asian company called Aolani Cloud on plans to use NVIDIA's Blackwell chips in Malaysia at a likely cost of more than $2.5 billion.
The journal's John Emott says the computing power would be used to fuel ByteDance's AI research and development.
Central to the American and Chinese geopolitical competition is this contest over AI and who's going to dominate AI in more fields and sectors. And the challenge that ByteDance has is that the best chips, these super powerful NVIDIA chips, cannot be sold directly to China. So in order to have the best chance of competing, ByteDance and
The other Chinese AI leaders do need to find a way to get this computational power that American export controls makes difficult, but I think as we are showing this article, not impossible.
ByteDance currently operates five of the world's 50 most popular AI consumer apps by monthly active users, according to a recent ranking by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Coming up, rising health insurance costs are forcing companies to get creative as they try to dull the pain for workers. And we'll take a look at the films competing for Best Picture at Sunday's Academy Awards.
That's after the break.
Thank you. Thank you.
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Chapter 4: Why did TikTok's parent company secure access to top Nvidia chips?
It caused me. Open the door. I thought you said he was dead. He was. I checked his pulse.
Okay, so if I have, let's say, tonight and Saturday night to watch two films, maybe these are good ones to start with. But let's say we somehow find a little time Sunday afternoon. Where is my time best spent? You've just had a kid, so I'm going to say... Not Hamnet. Not Hamnet, because that is the saddest film in the world. That's a trigger warning, avoid if you're a young parent. Yes.
So, I would recommend The Secret Agent, amazing Brazilian film, lowest budget film in the Best Picture category. One more, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. Three parts, it follows the book. So you can stop and start and see the baby in the middle.
This much we have established. That is my name. My name is Victor. Is there anything else that you can say? Anything?
Hattie, thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me. And to read what journal critics had to say about this year's 10 Best Picture nominees, check out the link we've left in our show notes. And to convince me and fellow listeners to watch your favorite film of the year, sound off in our Spotify comments. I'll see you there. And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning.
Today's show was produced by Patti Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend, enjoy your movies, and thanks for listening.
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