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Chelsea’s midfielder Palmer hits second successive hat-trick

LONDON — Chelsea midfielder Cole Palmer hit three goals in the first 30 minutes of his side’s Premier League match against Everton on Monday to claim his second successive hat-trick at Stamford Bridge.

He got the first after 13 minutes when he nutmegged Jared Branthwaite, played a one-two with Nicolas Jackson and instantly clipped in a shot from the edge of the box beyond the diving Jordan Pickford.

Five minutes later more intricate passing — albeit alongside some tentative Everton defending — set up the second as Mr. Pickford parried a Jackson shot straight to the feet of Mr. Palmer who knocked it into the empty net.

Mr. Pickford also gifted Chelsea their third after 29 minutes but it was an entirely different situation as Palmer intercepted his clearance 30 metres out and, with his weaker foot, chipped brilliantly over the retreating goalkeeper. It was Mr. Palmer’s second Stamford Bridge hat-trick in successive games after he scored three goals, including two in stoppage time, in a 4-3 win over Manchester United on April 4.

Mr. Palmer now has 22 goals this season and becomes the first Chelsea player to reach the 20-mark since Eden Hazard in 2018/19. — Reuters

Lakers play-in tourney

The play-in tournament is on, and not a few observers have seen fit to wonder how the Lakers will approach their match against the Pelicans today. It bears noting that a win would get them a first-round appointment with the Nuggets, over whom they have not prevailed in nine straight meetings. Not counting regular season set-tos, there remains the 0-4 ignominy they were subjected to in last year’s Western Conference Finals by the eventual National Basketball Association (NBA) champions. Which, in a nutshell, is why talk of them avoiding an early series versus their foils has gained momentum.

Admittedly, there is cause for the Lakers to think about maneuvering for the West’s eighth spot instead of a guaranteed seventh in order to gain a better matchup. After all, their strengths are accentuated vis-a-vis the top-draw Thunder’s inexperience and lack of size and speed. That said, the idea of taking one step back to subsequently move two steps forward is not without risk. Even without considering all the negatives arising from deliberately folding, they may well be going out of the frying pan and into the fire — what with a dangerous do-or-die battle awaiting them next.

Indeed, staking the start of a hopefully deep postseason run on a knockout encounter, where anything can happen, is tantamount to flirting with disaster. And that’s not even taking into account the winning records the competition has against the Lakers this season. Nothing is certain in the league, and the fickleness of fate is highlighted with either the Warriors or the Kings standing between them and advancement. Their situation isn’t like, say, the Cavaliers, who put up such a sterling tank job versus the supposedly hapless Hornets on the last day of the regular season just to fall to fourth in the East and avoid facing either the Sixers or the Heat with a higher seeding.

All signs point to the Lakers aiming to triumph today, their prospective date with the Nuggets notwithstanding. They didn’t hold practice on the eve of the game, opting instead to rest their legs. And while presumptive All-NBA Second Team selection Anthony Davis has been downgraded from “probable” to “questionable” due to a back ailment, he did say “there’s no doubt that I’m going to play … Get some massages, get some treatment, just keep it loose.” In other words, they fully understand the stakes involved, and they’re ready for whatever challenge comes their way.

Are the Lakers being foolhardy? The answer depends on perspective. The bottom line is that they know all roads go through the Nuggets, and it’s fair to contend that they’ll be better equipped for the seemingly Sisyphean endeavor when they’re relatively fresher. They’re confident in any case, and, if nothing else, they believe in themselves.

 

Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.

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To know more about SM Supermalls and their Summer activities, visit www.supermalls.com or follow @SMSupermalls on social media.

 

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Biden unlikely to cut Iran’s oil lifeline after attack

REUTERS

WASHINGTON — Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone strike on Israel is unlikely to prompt dramatic sanctions action on Iran’s oil exports from the Biden administration due to worries about boosting oil prices and angering top buyer China, said analysts.

Shortly after Tehran launched its weekend attack — retaliation for Israel’s suspected April 1 strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus — House Republican leaders accused President Joseph R. Biden of failing to enforce existing measures and said they would take up this week a series of bills to sharpen sanctions on Iran.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Representative Steve Scalise the No. 2 House Republican, said the administration had made it easier for Iran to sell its oil, generating revenues that were being used to “go fund terrorist activity.”

The political pressure to punish Iran creates a thorny problem for the administration: how to deter such attacks in future without escalating regional tensions, raising oil prices or antagonizing China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.

Washington has said for months that among its primary goals is to keep the Gaza conflict between Palestinian group Hamas and Israel from metastasizing in to a wider regional war, with a key aim of keeping Tehran on the sidelines.

Several regional analysts said they doubted Mr. Biden would take significant action to ramp up enforcement of existing US sanctions to choke off Iran’s crude exports, the lifeblood of its economy.

“Even if these bills pass, it’s hard to see the Biden administration going into overdrive, to try to spring into action or enforce existing sanctions or new ones to try to cut or curb (Iranian oil exports) in any meaningful way,” said Scott Modell, a former CIA officer, now Chief Executive Officer of Rapidan Energy Group.

ENFORCING SANCTIONS
Former President Donald Trump reinstated US sanctions on Iran’s oil in 2018 after pulling out of an international deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. The Biden administration has sought to crack down on evasion of those measures with sanctions against companies in China, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

Despite those efforts, Rapidan estimates Iran’s oil exports have hit 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels a day, excluding condensates, a very light oil. That is close to the 2 million barrels a day Iran exported before sanctions, said Mr. Modell.

The possible effect on gasoline prices is one reason Biden, a Democrat, may not move strongly to curb Iran’s oil exports.

Kimberly Donovan, a sanctions and anti-money laundering expert at the Atlantic Council, said that oil-related sanctions have not been strictly enforced in the past couple of years.

“I would not expect the administration to tighten enforcement in response to Iran’s missile and drone attacks against Israel over the weekend, mainly for concerns (that) could lead to increases in oil prices,” she said.

“The price of oil and ultimately the prices of gas at the pump become critical during an election year.”

A State Department spokesman said the Biden administration had not lifted any sanctions on Iran and continued to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic.

“Our extensive and overlapping sanctions on Iran remain in place, and we continue to enforce them,” said the spokesman.

THE CHINA FACTOR
Aggressively enforcing sanctions could also destabilize the U.S.-China relationship, which Chinese and US officials have tried to repair following a rocky period after the US last year downed a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that crossed US territory.

Almost all Iranian oil entering China is branded as originating from Malaysia or other Middle Eastern countries and is carried by a “dark fleet” of older tankers that typically switch off their transponders when loading at Iranian ports to avoid detection.

Tanker tracking specialist Vortexa Analytics estimated China acquired a record 55.6 million metric tons or 1.11 million barrels of Iranian crude a day last year. That amounted to roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports and 10% of China’s oil imports.

Several analysts suggested Washington might take some action to cut Iran’s oil exports in part to temper any Israeli reaction to the Iranian strikes, which could escalate the conflict.

But they said this would fall short of dramatic action such as sanctioning a major Chinese financial institution and instead could involve targeting Chinese or other entities engaged in such trade.

“If you really want to go after Iran’s oil exports yes, you would have to take meaningful action against China,” said one source familiar with the issue.

“Are you really going to go after the big banks? Are you going to do something that the administration has not done and even the Trump administration did not do?” he added.

Jon Alterman, a Middle East analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there were limits to what Washington can do to impose sanctions and that evaders are adept at finding loopholes.

“I’d expect to see a gesture in the direction of (imposing) economic consequences on Iran, but I don’t expect the White House — or any future White House — to be able to completely turn off the spigot of Iranian oil,” he said. — Reuters

Coral reefs suffer fourth global bleaching event — NOAA

CORAL REEFS bleach in the Great Barrier Reef as scientists conduct in-water monitoring during marine heat in Martin Reef, March 15, 2024, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on April 12, 2024. — AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE/VERONIQUE MOCELLIN/ HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

ALONG COASTLINES from Australia to Kenya to Mexico, many of the world’s colorful coral reefs have turned a ghostly white in what scientists said on Monday amounted to the fourth global bleaching event in the last three decades.

At least 54 countries and territories have experienced mass bleaching among their reefs since February 2023 as climate change warms the ocean’s surface waters, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch, the world’s top coral reef monitoring body.

Bleaching is triggered by water temperature anomalies that cause corals to expel the colorful algae living in their tissues. Without the algae’s help in delivering nutrients to the corals, the corals cannot survive.

“More than 54% of the reef areas in the global ocean are experiencing bleaching-level heat stress,” Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello said.

Announcement of the latest global bleaching event was made jointly by NOAA and the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), a global intergovernmental conservation partnership. For an event to be deemed global, significant bleaching must occur in all three ocean basins — the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian — within a 365-day period.

Like this year’s bleaching event, the last three — in 1998, 2010 and 2014-2017 — also coincided with an El Niño climate pattern, which typically ushers in warmer sea temperatures. Sea surface temperatures over the past year have smashed records that have been kept since 1979, as the effects of El Niño are compounded by climate change.

Corals are invertebrates that live in colonies. Their calcium carbonate secretions form hard and protective scaffolding that serves as a home to the single-celled algae.

Scientists have expressed concern that many of the world’s reefs will not recover from the intense, prolonged heat stress.

“What is happening is new for us, and to science,” said marine ecologist Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“We cannot yet predict how severely stressed corals will do,” even if they survive immediate heat stress, Mr. Alvarez-Filip added.

Recurring bleaching events are upending earlier scientific models that forecast that between 70% and 90% of the world’s coral reefs could be lost when global warming reached 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial temperatures. To date, the world has warmed by some 1.2 °C (2.2 °F).

In a 2022 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, experts determined that just 1.2 C of warming would be enough to severely impact coral reefs, “with most available evidence suggesting that coral-dominated ecosystems will be non-existent at this temperature.”

This year’s global bleaching event adds further weight to concerns among scientists that corals are in grave danger.

“A realistic interpretation is that we have crossed the tipping point for coral reefs,” said ecologist David Obura, who heads Coastal Oceans Research and Development Indian Ocean East Africa from Mombasa, Kenya.

“They’re going into a decline that we cannot stop, unless we really stop carbon dioxide emissions” that are driving climate change, Mr. Obura added.

Coral reefs are estimated to provide some $2.7 trillion in goods and services every year — with benefits such as attracting tourists, protecting coastal communities from storm surges, and supporting coastal fisheries, according to a 2020 valuation by ICRI’s scientific network.

GLOBAL BLEACHING COULD BE WORST YET
With bleaching surveys ongoing in the Indian Ocean and Pacific, NOAA experts expect that this global bleaching event could turn out to be the most extensive yet.

Caribbean reefs experienced widespread bleaching last August as coastal sea surface temperatures hovered between 1 C (1.8 F) and 3 C (5.4 F) above normal. Scientists working in the region then began documenting mass die-offs across the region.

From the staghorns to brain corals, “everything that you can see while diving was white in some reefs,” Mr. Alvarez-Filip said. “I have never witnessed this level of bleaching.”

Bleached corals can recover if waters cool, but some Caribbean corals were so stressed that they continued to die even as temperatures dropped over winter, Mr. Alvarez-Filip added.

Florida corals subjected to extreme heat shocks did not even have time to bleach, Mr. Manzello said.

“They got so stressed, they just died and sloughed off their tissue,” Mr. Manzello said.

At the end of the Southern Hemisphere summer in March, tropical reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans also began to suffer.

A record-breaking number of individual reefs within the Great Barrier have suffered from heat stress in recent months, and many are now draining of color, said coral biologist Neal Cantin at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences. Mr. Cantin noted that marine heatwaves were registering some 2.5 °C (4.5 °F) above the normal summertime maximum.

Recent aerial surveys have shown “very high” or “extreme” levels of bleaching in nearly half of surveyed reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area.

That makes this the fifth bleaching event in the Great Barrier Reef in just nine years — far more frequent than the twice per decade that scientists expected by the 2030s.

Indian Ocean reefs off Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and the Seychelles have also suffered bleaching, though not as severely as in 2016 thanks to an early change in this year’s monsoon leading to cooler conditions, Mr. Obura said.

“The stress experienced by corals in the region is likely less than it could have been, which is very lucky,” Mr. Obura said. — Reuters

Jury selection under way in historic Trump criminal trial

Former U.S. President Donald Trump — REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS/FILE PHOTO

NEW YORK — The judge in Donald Trump’s trial dismissed dozens of potential New York City jurors on Monday who said they could not fairly decide whether the 2024 Republican presidential candidate illegally covered up a hush money payment to a porn star.

On the first day of the historic criminal trial, the first to involve a former US president, Justice Juan Merchan told nearly 100 prospective jurors they must set aside any biases or personal attitudes about the defendant or the case, including “political orientation.”

At least 50 were dismissed after saying they could not be impartial in judging Mr. Trump. Others were excused who said they could not serve for other reasons.

“I just couldn’t do it,” one prospective juror was heard to say outside the courtroom.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has charged Mr. Trump with falsifying records to cover up a $130,000 payment in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she has said they had. Mr. Trump has denied any such relationship with Ms. Daniels and has pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has testified that he made the payment to buy Ms. Daniels’ silence ahead of the 2016 election, in which Mr. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Trump must attend the trial, which is expected to last through May, the judge ruled, denying a request for Mr. Trump to miss a session to attend a US Supreme Court session in Washington next week where Mr. Trump’s lawyers will argue he should not face separate criminal charges of election interference.

“It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam, this scam trial,” Mr. Trump said in the hallway after the court adjourned until 9:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) on Tuesday.

Lawyers from both sides will seek to impanel 12 jurors and six alternates to hear what could be the only criminal case Mr. Trump faces before the Nov. 5 election.

Choosing a jury from a pool of people from heavily Democratic Manhattan could take several days, to be followed by opening statements and testimony from a parade of potentially riveting witnesses, including Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Merchan said that in order to convict, jurors must find that Mr. Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, not that he is “probably” guilty.

A guilty verdict would not bar Mr. Trump from office, but half of independent voters and one in four Republicans say they would not vote for him if he were convicted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Falsifying business records in New York is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, though many of those found guilty have been sentenced to fines or probation.

Wearing his signature blue suit and red tie, Mr. Trump, 77, watched from the defendant’s table as prosecutors asked a judge to fine him and remind him he could go to jail for violating a gag order that bars him from interfering with potential witnesses.

Prosecutors asked the judge to fine Mr. Trump $1,000 for each of three social-media posts this month about Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels.

“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order. He has attacked witnesses in the case, in the past he has attacked grand jurors in the case,” prosecutor Christopher Conroy said.

Mr. Merchan set April 23 to consider the proposed fines.

Under Mr. Merchan’s gag order, Mr. Trump is barred from making public statements about witnesses concerning their potential testimony and about prosecutors, court staff and their family members if the statements are meant to interfere with the case.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said Mr. Trump did not violate the gag order because he was responding to Ms. Daniels and Mr. Cohen, who he said have been “just generally disparaging President Trump constantly.”

Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance law, though the federal prosecutors who brought that case did not charge Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has called Mr. Cohen a “serial liar” and his lawyers are expected to attack his credibility at trial.

POLICE STAND GUARD
Police stood guard in front of the courthouse amid a maze of barricades. A handful of protesters carried hand-painted signs reading “LOSER” and “convict Trump already.”

Though the case is regarded by some legal experts as the least consequential of the four criminal prosecutions he faces, it is the only one guaranteed to go to trial before the Nov. 5 election.

The businessman-turned-politician, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, says he is being targeted by his political enemies.

“This is political persecution,” Mr. Trump said before entering the courtroom.

In his three other criminal cases, Mr. Trump stands accused of mishandling classified information and trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joseph R. Biden. He has pleaded not guilty in all of those cases.

Mr. Bragg has argued that the case concerns an unlawful scheme to corrupt the 2016 election by burying a scandalous story that would have harmed Mr. Trump’s campaign.

David Pecker, the former head of the National Enquirer tabloid, will testify that he ran stories in the tabloid to boost Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.

Also due on the witness stand is Karen McDougal, a former nude model for Playboy magazine who prosecutors say was paid by the National Enquirer to keep quiet about an affair she says she had with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Merchan said he would not permit witnesses or prosecutors to tell the jury that the affair took place while Mr. Trump’s wife Melania was pregnant with their child.

Trump has said he plans to testify in his own defense, a risky move that could open him to cross-examination. — Reuters

Technical outage crippled Dutch air traffic for hours, authorities say

Image by Andy Choinski from Pixabay

AMSTERDAM — Dutch airspace was almost completely closed for nearly three hours late on Monday and early on Tuesday due to a technical outage of air traffic control systems, local authorities said.

The outage occurred at 11 p.m. local time (2100 GMT) on Monday and was resolved almost three hours later, Air Traffic Control Netherlands said.

During that time very limited air traffic was handled in Dutch airspace, while flights were diverted to other airports in the region.

The air traffic control authorities said they were investigating the outage, and gave no further details on the cause.

“We are aware of the unpleasant consequences this has for passengers, airlines, and the airport. Further investigation is being conducted into the cause of the malfunction that occurred,” they said in a statement.

The outage mainly hit traffic to and from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs, although the number of flights affected was limited because the problems occurred at night. — Reuters

WHO warns of falsified cough syrup ingredients seized in Pakistan

UNITED STATES MISSION GENEVA

THE WORLD Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert on Monday warning drugmakers of five contaminated batches of propylene glycol, an ingredient used in medicinal syrups, that appear to have been falsely labelled as manufactured by Dow Chemical units in Asia and Europe.

The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) issued three alerts between January and March over high levels of ethylene glycol (EG), an industrial solvent known to be toxic, found in drums purportedly made by subsidiaries of Dow Chemical in Thailand, Germany and Singapore.

DRAP sent suspect drums of propylene glycol, a sweet-tasting alcohol used in over-the-counter medicines such as cough syrups, for testing. The samples were found to have EG contamination of 0.76-100%, according to the WHO. International manufacturing standards say only trace amounts of EG, below 0.1%, can be considered safe.

Contaminated cough syrups made in India and Indonesia have been linked to deaths of more than 300 children globally since late 2022. The medicines were found to contain high levels of EG and diethylene glycol, leading to acute kidney injury and death. In the Indonesia case, authorities found that one supplier had placed false Dow Thailand labels onto drums containing EG that it sold to a distributor for pharmaceutical use.

Several of the batches seized by DRAP were labelled as having been manufactured in 2023, the WHO said, months after the agency issued a global alert calling on drugmakers to verify the quality of their suppliers.

The WHO said Dow confirmed that the materials identified in its Monday alert and found by DRAP were not manufactured or supplied by the company.

“The propylene glycol materials identified in this alert are considered to have been deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled,” the WHO said, noting batches may have been distributed to other countries and still be in storage.

Dow did not immediately respond to a request for comment. — Reuters

Fire breaks out at Copenhagen’s historic stock exchange building

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

COPENHAGEN — A fire hit Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange on Tuesday, one of the Danish capital’s best-known buildings, engulfing its spire which collapsed onto the roof in a scene reminiscent of the 2019 blaze at Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, police said.

Video from the scene showed people carrying large paintings away from the building to save the historic artefacts from the flames.

“Horrible pictures from the Bourse. So sad. An iconic building that means a lot to all of us … Our own Notre-Dame moment,” Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen wrote on X.

The historic building, whose spire was shaped as the tails of four dragons intertwined, had been under renovation when the fire broke out.

The scaffolding around the building made it harder for the emergency services to get through to the flames, while the copper roof was preserving the heat, the Copenhagen fire department said.

The nearby finance ministry was evacuated as a result of the fire, the police said.

The Dutch Renaissance style building no longer houses the Danish stock exchange, but serves as headquarters for the Danish Chamber of Commerce.

“We are met by a terrible sight. The Bourse is on fire,” the Chamber of Commerce wrote on X.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.

Copenhagen police asked people to avoid driving in the inner part of the city.

The Danish Chamber of Commerce, which has owned the building since 1857, has worked on restoring it to the style of Denmark’s King Christian IV, who had the building constructed in the 17th century.

“400 years of Danish cultural heritage in flames,” Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt wrote on X. — Reuters

D-Link partners with VST ECS to drive innovation

D-Link, a leading global provider of networking solutions, and VST ECS, a premier IT distributor with an extensive channel network in the Philippines, announced its distribution agreement today. The partnership aims to accelerate innovation across the country. 

The agreement was formally announced at a launch event held at Shangri-La at the Fort on March 12, 2024 attended by key representatives from both companies and channel partners. 

D-Link Southeast Asia President Jacky Chang emphasized the significance of the partnership for both companies.

“VST ECS’s established distribution network throughout the country is essential to making D-Link’s innovative networking solutions more accessible than ever before,” Chang said. “This expanded reach will allow us to connect with a wider audience and contribute to the advancement of the IT sector in the Philippines.”

VST ECS President Jimmy Go echoed Chang’s sentiment, highlighting the company’s commitment to the partnership.

“We are delighted to add D-Link’s business and home networking solutions to our portfolio,” Go said. “This strategic alliance empowers us and our extensive channel network to capitalize on growing opportunities across various segments. Together, we are confident in delivering cutting-edge solutions that drive connectivity, productivity, and profitability.”

The event featured a presentation by D-Link Regional Product Director Sam Wong, who provided an overview of the company’s latest offerings, including 5G/4G mobile routers, WIFI 6 routers, and Nuclias Cloud solutions. The presentation aimed to highlight the business opportunities for IT resellers, telecommunications companies, and system integrators to leverage D-Link’s technology and deliver high-quality services to clients in the Philippines.

D-Link Philippines Country Sales Manager Nina Diaz and VST-ECS Senior Product Manager for D-Link Edgar Contreras presented the D-Link Registered Partners Program and Incentive Trip, highlighting the value proposition for VSTECS channel partners.

To know more about D-Link products, please contact Edgar Contreras @econtreras@msi-ecs.com.ph.

 

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Israeli military vows response to Iran attack as calls for restraint mount

ISRAELI FLAG flies in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 8, 2023. — REUTERS

JERUSALEM – Israelis awaited word on how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would respond to Iran’s first-ever direct attack as international pressure for restraint grew amid fears of an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.

Netanyahu on Monday summoned his war cabinet for the second time in less than 24 hours to weigh a response to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack, a government source said.

Military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said Israel would respond. He provided no details.

“This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response,” he said at the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel, which sustained some damage in Saturday night’s attack.

The prospect of Israeli retaliation has alarmed many Iranians already enduring economic pain and tighter social and political controls since protests in 2022-23.

Iran launched the attack in retaliation for what it says was an April 1 Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus, and signaled that it does not seek further escalation.

While the attack caused no deaths and limited damage, it has increased fears of open warfare between the long-time foes and fueled concerns that violence rooted in the Gaza war is spreading.

US President Joe Biden told Netanyahu at the weekend that the United States, which helped Israel blunt the Iranian attack, will not participate in an Israeli counter-strike.

Since the war in Gaza began in October, clashes have erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Israel said four of its soldiers were wounded hundreds of meters inside Lebanese territory overnight.

It appeared to be the first such known incident since the Gaza war erupted, although there have been several exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah.

“We’re on the edge of the cliff and we have to move away from it,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, told Spanish radio station Onda Cero. “We have to step on the brakes and reverse gear.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron made similar appeals. Washington and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also have called for restraint.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined on Monday to say if Biden urged Netanyahu in talks on Saturday night to exercise restraint in responding to Iran.

“We don’t want to see a war with Iran. We don’t want to see a regional conflict,” Kirby told a briefing, adding that it was for Israel to decide “whether and how they’ll respond.”

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in calls on Monday with counterparts in the Middle East and Europe, said “while the United States does not seek escalation, we will continue to defend Israel and U.S. personnel,” the Pentagon said.

Russia has refrained from publicly criticizing its ally Iran but has also urged restraint.

“Further escalation is in no one’s interests,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

China said it believed Iran could “handle the situation well and spare the region further turmoil” while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a phone call on Monday that China also appreciated Iran’s emphasis on not targeting regional and neighboring countries, according to the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Iran mounted its attack after the April 1 killing in Damascus of seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, including two senior commanders. Israel neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the strike.

 

G7 MULLS IRAN SANCTIONS

Iran’s retaliatory attack, involving more than 300 missiles and drones, caused modest damage in Israel and wounded a 7-year-old girl. Most were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and with help from the U.S., Britain, France and Jordan.

In Gaza itself, where more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive according to Gaza health ministry figures, Iran’s action drew applause.

Israel began its campaign against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages by Israeli tallies.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the Group of Seven major democracies were working on a package of coordinated measures against Iran.

“I spoke to my fellow G7 leaders, we are united in our condemnation of this attack,” Sunak said in parliament.

Italy, which holds the rotating G7 presidency, said it was open to new sanctions and suggested any new measures would target individuals. In an interview with Reuters, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said all G7 members would have to back new sanctions.

Iran’s attack has disrupted travel, with at least a dozen airlines cancelling or rerouting flights, and Europe’s aviation regulator reaffirming advice that airlines use caution in Israeli and Iranian airspace. – Reuters

Baidu says AI chatbot ‘Ernie Bot’ has amassed 200 million users

REUTERS

HONG KONG – China’s Baidu said on Tuesday its artificial intelligence chatbot “Ernie Bot” has garnered more than 200 million users as it seeks to remain China’s most popular ChatGPT-like chatbot amid increasingly fierce competition.

Robin Li, CEO of the Chinese internet company, revealed the new milestone at a conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday. The chatbot was released to the public eight months ago.

The company last shared its user base number in December when it reached over 100 million.

Mr. Li also said that Ernie Bot’s application programming interface (API) is being used 200 million times everyday, meaning the chatbot was requested by its user to conduct tasks that many times a day.

The number enterprise clients for the chatbot reached 85,000, Mr. Li added.

Last March, Ernie Bot was the first locally developed ChatGPT-like chatbot to be announced in China, but it only won approval for public release in August, one of the first eight AI chatbots China approved.

Unlike many other countries, China bars companies from rolling out generative AI services before obtaining an approval from Beijing.

Recent data shows that rival domestic AI services, particularly the “Kimi” chatbot from a 12-month-old, Alibaba-backed start-up named Moonshot AI, are quickly catching up on Ernie Bot despite obtaining approval for public release later.

Data from AIcpb.com, a site that tracks user visits to online AI services, show that Ernie Bot was visited a total of 14.9 million times across its app and website last month.

However, Kimi was not far behind, with a total of 12.6 million visits in the same month.

And Kimi, which obtained its approval for public release in November, was growing much faster, with visits jumping 321.6% in March from February, while the number of visits to Ernie Bot grew more than 48%, AIcpb.com data shows.

Globally, Chinese generative AI services still lag far behind their Western counterparts. According to AIcpb.com, OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the world’s most popular generative AI service, with total traffic to the product growing 9% to reach 1.86 billion views last month. – Reuters

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