A plume of smoke rises after a strike on Tehran on March 4, 2026. <\/p>\n
Atta Kenare | AFP | Getty Images<\/p>\n
What you need to know today<\/p>\n China on Thursday set its <\/strong>GDP growth target<\/strong><\/a> for 2026 at 4.5% to 5%<\/strong> \u2014 the lowest target on record going back to the early 1990s \u2014 according to a copy of the government work report seen by CNBC, as Beijing grapples with persistent deflationary pressures and trade tensions with the U.S. Defense spending<\/a> will rise by 7%, the slowest increase since 2021, although analysts believe the official figures are understated.<\/p>\n A vote to force President Donald Trump to pull back <\/strong>from the war in Iran failed to pass<\/a> in the U.S. Senate Wednesday. The resolution faced plenty of hurdles and was largely symbolic, as Trump was almost certain to veto it. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez on Wednesday described<\/a> the Middle East war as a “disaster”. That follows Trump’s pledge to cut off trade with Madrid after Spain’s government prevented two jointly operated bases in its territory from being used in the strikes.<\/p>\n Amazon’s Bahrain data center was targeted by Iran <\/strong>for supporting the U.S. military, state media Fars News Agency said<\/a> Wednesday. The company’s cloud computing unit said Monday that one of its facilities in Bahrain was damaged due to a nearby drone strike on Sunday. Two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were also damaged after they were “directly struck” by drones.<\/p>\n Global 15% tariffs will start this week,<\/strong>\u00a0U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u00a0told CNBC<\/a>, up from the current\u00a010%. Bessent also predicted that U.S. tariff rates would, by August, effectively return to where they stood before the Supreme Court recently struck down the often-steeper duties that Trump unilaterally imposed on most of the world’s countries last year.<\/p>\n A tech industry group expressed ‘concern’ to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/strong> after a company was designated as a supply chain risk. The letter, written<\/a> by the Information Technology Industry Council, did not name Anthropic, though the artificial intelligence company was given that label on Friday after failing to reach a deal with the Defense Department. Among the participating firms were Nvidia, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.<\/p>\n Broadcom reported earnings and revenue beat, <\/strong>and issued<\/a> a strong forecast for the current period, as the chipmaker rides the artificial intelligence boom. The stock rose as much as 5% in extended trading Wednesday. “We have line of sight to achieve AI revenue from chips, just chips, in excess of $100 billion in 2027,” Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said on a conference call with analysts. “We have also secured the supply chain required to achieve this.”<\/p>\n And finally…<\/p>\n Nvidia CEO Huang says $30 billion OpenAI investment ‘might be the last’<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Nvidia<\/a>\u00a0CEO Jensen Huang said the company’s recent $30 billion investment in\u00a0OpenAI<\/a>\u00a0“might be the last time” it invests in the\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0startup before it could go public toward the end of the year. <\/p>\n He added that the $100 billion investment that the two companies touted in September is probably “not in the cards.”<\/p>\n “The reason for that is because they’re going to go public,” Huang said during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plume of smoke rises after a strike on Tehran on March 4, 2026. Atta Kenare | AFP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[4129,6565,489,195,23334,167724,38379,84784,13219,9450,79,207,356,179,18,162922,6620,170965,19,157631,18929,17,165442,157630,170590,17935,188,19216,5762,168032,778,4130,81065,51692,2712,162917,88328,22965,54782,384,4054],"class_list":["post-369072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-advanced-micro-devices-inc","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-amazon-com-inc","tag-apple-inc","tag-arista-networks-inc","tag-ark-innovation-etf","tag-asml-holding-nv","tag-bahrain","tag-boeing-co","tag-broadcom-inc","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-first-trust-cloud-computing-etf","tag-foreign-policy","tag-general-dynamics-corp","tag-ie","tag-invesco-qqq-trust","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-ishares-expanded-tech-software-sector-etf","tag-ishares-semiconductor-etf","tag-ishares-u-s-aerospace-defense-etf","tag-lockheed-martin-corp","tag-markets","tag-marvell-technology-inc","tag-microsoft-corp","tag-northrop-grumman-corp","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-oracle-corp","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-scott-bessent","tag-spdr-sp-semiconductors","tag-super-micro-computer-inc","tag-taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-co-ltd","tag-technology-select-sector-spdr-fund","tag-united-states","tag-world-markets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}