With the clock winding down on its contract to provide the National Basketball Association with team uniforms, Adidas said yesterday that it would sit out negotiations for a deal past the one it has through the 2016-17 season.

"Belle of the Ball." "The Shoe Fits." "Happily Ever After." "Bippity Boppity Boom." Scan the morning headlines and you'll find just about every applicable clich in the media kingdom applied to Kenneth Branagh's new live-action version of "Cinderella" for Disney. It took the weekend with $70.1 million in domestic ticket sales, according to preliminary figures, raking in an additional $62.4 million overseas, including $25 million in China.

How do you rebuild your reputation after an investigative news report has dismantled it? Lumber Liquidators picked up the PR toolbox and started hammering away yesterday morning in a conference call - a move that helped its stock to "soar" 14% after it had been "pummeled" since "the company said '60 Minutes' would portray it in an 'unfavorable light with regard to sourcing and product quality," CNBC's Everett Rosenfeld reports.

L.L. Bean, which has archived more about direct sales to consumers through its catalog, website and retail stores than many an Internet startup has ever learned, says it will quadruple its brick-and-mortar outlets to "at least 100" by 2020 starting with four more undisclosed locations this year, reports the AP's David Sharp.

A global, celebrity-infused and "socially led" Pepsi Challenge launches today with "challenges designed to galvanize consumers around the world to defy convention, make every moment - big or small - epic, and truly 'Live for Now,'" according to a news release that hit CNW, the Canadian newswire, early this morning. An "interactive Multimedia News Release" - which, as far as we can tell, means that you can click on some videos or tweet hashtag PepsiChallenge - can be viewed here.

Apple's unveiling of its Watch yesterday went off pretty much as expected but a few other announcements gave the "Spring Forward" event some of the pizzazz we love to expect from these extravaganzas in stagecraft and hype.

The time has come today for the Apple Watch which - unless analysts and media are wrong in a way most haven't been since the tech crash that launched this very week in 2000 - will be announced at its "Spring Forward" event that will stream live starting at 10 a.m. PDT today.

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus said yesterday that it would retire elephants - a featured marketing mascot for more than a century - from its performances by 2018 in response concerns about their treatment.

AbbVie, the North Chicago-based pharmaceutical firm whose $52-billion bid to buy the Dublin, Ire.-based Shire Plc. fell apart last year over tax rule changes, swooped in last night to snatch biopharmaceutical maker Pharmacyclics from the talons of Johnson & Johnson, which co-markets the cancer drug Imbruvica with it.

Long, long ago, when men were boys and the Internet was just a gleam in the eyes of some geeks in the government, lads made pretend they were garrulous truck drivers barreling around the sandbox with their collections of Tonka trucks. Ford is tapping into that spirit with a special edition, Tonka-branded F-750 dump truck that goes on display at the National Equipment Association Work Truck show in Indianapolis today.