🌎 Apple’s chips aren’t ripening

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Here’s what you need to know

Apple is falling behind in its plan to use homegrown chips in iPhones. The multibillion-dollar effort is snagging on the complexity of Qualcomm’s technology, and may not come to fruition until 2025 or 2026.

Mars is buying Britain’s Hotel Chocolat for £534 million ($662 million). The UK chocolatier will try to grow its international footprint while under the wing of the US foods giant.

Xi Jinping called on US business leaders to help ease tensions with the US. But during a dinner Wednesday, the Chinese president didn’t completely win over the crowd, as concrete plans to boost ties weren’t shared.

US prosecutors seized the biggest ever batch of knock-off luxury goods. The scheme included more than 100,000 items worth more than $1 billion.

Ethiopian Airlines is going back to the 737 Max

“Once bitten, twice shy,” doesn’t really apply to Africa’s biggest airline. Ethiopian Airlines said that it has ordered 20 planes of the Boeing 737-8 Max—the same model that killed 157 people six minutes after taking off from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa in March 2019.

Most airlines have since avoided purchasing the aircraft, with only 30 out of the world’s 5,000 airlines flying it. But Ethiopian Airlines thinks adding the model to its fleet makes business sense—despite travelers citing fears of flying in the 737 Max since the 2019 accident.

Need a refresher on the timeline of the 737 Max disasters and ensuing controversy? Quartz’s Faustine Ngila has a detailed flyover.

There’s Pepsi in the river

PepsiCo is facing legal trouble in New York as the shores of the Buffalo River have been littered with single-use plastic packaging like that used in Cheetos packets and Gatorade bottle caps.

The lawsuit claims that not only are Pespi’s plastics a public nuisance, but that the company has deceptively marketed how much of those plastics it can actually recycle.

85 and 25: Different beverage and snack food brands respectively owned by PepsiCo that come in mostly single-use plastic containers.

17%: Share of the 1,916 pieces of plastic trash collected with an identifiable brand in a 2022 survey of 13 waste collection sites along the Buffalo River by the attorney general’s office, suggesting PepsiCo’s single-use plastic was the most rampant.

11%: Increase in virgin plastic use by PepsiCo in 2022, year-over-year—the aim of a 20% reduction by 2030 is feeling far off.

100%: Products PepsiCo has pledged to aim to make “recyclable, compostable, biodegradable or reusable” by 2025.

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Surprising discoveries

Only a small portion of the US uses the word “sneakers.” And an even smaller portion uses the phrase “gym shoes.”

The US may be getting more pandas from China. The “envoys of friendship” are also really pricey propaganda.

Sailors are playing heavy metal to try and deter orcas. It’s not working.

The most famous stamp in the US pictures an upside down, old-timey airplane. It’s called an Inverted Jenny, and it’s worth $2 million.

A volcano that led to the evacuation of a town in Iceland may just be starting a new eruptive cycle. It could mean decades of instability for the people involved.

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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, Inverted Jennys, and volcano-proofed home designs to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.