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Thuggish behavior

Not a few eyebrows were raised when Public Enemy Number One Dillon Brooks signed an $86-million contract in the offseason. It wasn’t simply that his annual take-home pay through 2027 amounted to $21.5 million, a whopping 84% increase relative to the last three years. It was that his disastrous playoff stint remained fresh in the minds of hoops habitues; in six games, he managed to alienate even Grizzlies fans for, in his words, “poking the bear” and posting negative advanced stats across the board.

Admittedly, the Rockets have been anything but welcoming for free agents given their Sad Sack situation. In the face of their poor performances in recent memory, more desirable targets have chosen to stay away. That said, they wound up betting against themselves in welcoming Brooks to the fold. In all likelihood, his tough-guy stance and utter refusal to back down to anybody appealed to the defensive predilections of newly installed head coach Ime Udoka. Perhaps they also figured he would solidify esprit de corps during their rebuilding phase.

In any case, the Rockets have made their bed. And, creditably or otherwise, Brooks didn’t take long to show how much of an impact he would be making. Four and a half minutes and change into his preseason debut, he saw fit to reenact his faux pas with LeBron James in the immediate past postseason; as with the all-time great, he punched the Pacers’ Daniel Theis in the privates, earning for him a flagrant 2 foul and automatic ejection. It was an obvious brain fart; even if it hadn’t been caught, his left uppercut served no discernible advantage to the cause of the red and white.

Significantly, Brooks argued in the aftermath that contact was incidental at best. “I might have tapped [Theis] below the waist. But, you know, he got right back up,” he said, as if the act wasn’t punishable in and of itself. “I don’t know. It’s weird that every time it happens to me, I get picked on.” There is, of course, a mountain of difference between getting picked on and getting called out. And what he excused as “just a part of the reputation” begs the question. He very well knows the reason he has one in the first place.

Make no mistake. Brooks is an enforcer, and he can provide much-needed toughness. On the other hand, he has likewise proven his capacity for thuggish behavior. Which is why his abbreviated inaugural may yet be the best thing to happen to the Rockets. It becomes the impetus for Udoka to rein him in, and fast. Else, they will find their bid for respect and respectability sabotaged by their prized acquisition.

 

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.

Israel-Hamas conflict is ‘new cloud’ darkening economic outlook — IMF chief

A participant stands near a logo of the International Monetary Fund at the annual meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Oct. 12, 2018. — REUTERS/JOHANNES P. CHRISTO/FILE PHOTO

MARRAKECH, Morocco — International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday the “heartbreaking” Israel-Hamas conflict threatened to darken an already murky global economic outlook.

“We are closely monitoring how the situation evolves, how it is affecting, especially oil markets,” Georgieva said. There had been some fluctuations in oil prices and reactions in markets but it was too early to predict the economic impact, she added.

“Very clearly, this is a new cloud on not the safest horizon for the world economy, a new cloud darkening this horizon,” she told a news conference at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Marrakech, Morocco.

Georgieva joined a growing chorus of financial leaders expressing concern about the sudden eruption of violence in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has already claimed more than 2,500 lives.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip in retribution for the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, when hundreds of gunmen poured across the barrier fence and rampaged through Israeli towns on Saturday.

Israel said on Thursday there would be no humanitarian break to its siege of the Gaza Strip until all hostages taken by Hamas were freed, after the Red Cross pleaded for fuel to be allowed in to prevent overwhelmed hospitals from “turning into morgues”.

“It’s heartbreaking to see innocent civilians dying,” an emotional Georgieva told reporters. “Who pays the price? It is the innocent who pay the price.”

Georgieva said severe shocks were becoming “the new normal” in a global economy characterized by weak growth, economic fragmentation and deepening divergences, with interest rates expected to stay higher for longer to tame persistent inflation.

She appealed to countries to avoid escalating the situation and focus on areas of cooperation. “We do need to build our agility in terms of anticipating shocks and being quick to respond,” she said.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters any regional expansion of the conflict would lead to “problematic economic consequences” for energy prices and global growth. — Reuters

Dell sees surge in orders for AI-powered solutions

TRUSTPAIR.COM

Traditional enterprises are increasingly investing in artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for their specific needs, according to Dell Technologies, Inc.

“We are seeing enterprises that want to apply this technology to their trade secrets, proprietary information, and core pieces of their business,” John Roese, global chief technology officer at Dell, said during a virtual press briefing on Thursday.

“The best, easiest, and safest way to do that is in a system they own and operate in their own data center, in a colocation, or delivered as a service,” he added.

For technology companies like Dell, the growing interest in AI solutions provides an opportunity to expand or adjust their product and service offerings.

Dell President for Asia Pacific and Japan Peter Marrs said the company has over $2 billion in pending orders for its generative AI products, and this number is growing as they secure more deals.

The company is focusing on the direct application of AI to enterprise processes, where it expects a significant impact of AI on the global market, Mr. Marrs said.

“We’re seeing it across governments, advertising, banks, telcos, web techs, manufacturing, and much more,” he commented on the varied enterprise-focused AI use cases emerging across markets.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) noted that spending on AI systems is expected to grow to $78.4 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 25.5% from 2022 to 2027.

The IDC also forecasts the generative AI market to expand by $3 billion in 2027, with an 85% CAGR from 2022 to 2027, according to its latest Worldwide AI Spending Guide.

“The Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan and China, is emerging as a vibrant hub of AI innovation, accounting for 34% of total AI spending,” the IDC said. “The region’s commitment to AI favors economic growth, digital transformation, and technological leadership.”

“The increase in AI spending reflects a shift toward leveraging cutting-edge technology to reimagine operations, improve customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly changing market,” it added.

Mr. Marrs noted that AI should be seen as a new and demanding class of user, not a workload. “One that creates and consumes data enterprises have never seen.”

In addition to enterprise applications, Dell is also seeing a demand for unique and localized large language model builds for diverse native APJ languages and cultures, according to Mr. Marrs.

“If you truly want an LLM to represent not just your function but your ethics and culture, the source of data you use to train and fine-tune it is incredibly important,” Mr. Roese said.

He also said that the tech market is exploring adversarial systems, where one AI system is used to error-check other AI systems.

Regarding regulation, it must recognize how AI intersects with data, privacy, infrastructure, and sovereignty to get it right, according to Mr. Roese.

“AI is not a technology in isolation. AI systems do not work without data,” he said, emphasizing the need for government regulators to understand the dependencies involved.

“If they put the wrong regulations in place, they will impede their local markets from developing this technology,” he added, expecting a “very complex regulatory environment” given the fragmented frameworks he sees emerging.

AI’s ethical implications, such as transparency and penalties for malicious use, must be urgently included in any regulation to create public trust, Mr. Roese noted.

He mentioned that Dell is having conversations with governments around the world regarding AI regulations. — Miguel Hanz L. Antivola

Goldman Sachs sues Malaysia over 1MDB settlement deal

A construction worker walks in front of a 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) billboard in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Feb. 3, 2016. — REUTERS

GOLDMAN SACHS Group sued Malaysia in a UK court on Wednesday, as tensions escalate over a settlement agreement on the bank’s role in the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB corruption scandal.

“Today, we filed for arbitration against the Government of Malaysia for violating its obligations to appropriately credit assets against the guarantee provided by Goldman Sachs in our settlement agreement and to recover other assets,” a spokesperson for the bank told Reuters.

The arbitration has been filed with the London Court of International Arbitration, a source told Reuters. The lawsuit was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.

Meanwhile, a Malaysian government task force said on Thursday it viewed Goldman Sachs’ filing of arbitration proceedings as premature.

Goldman Sachs in 2020 had agreed to pay $3.9 billion to settle Malaysia’s criminal probe over its role in the multi-billion dollar 1MDB corruption scandal.

But the parties are now in disagreement over the deal, which includes a stipulation for Goldman to make an interim payment if Malaysia did not recover at least $500 million from the firm by August 2022.

Malayia’s 1MDB task force said Goldman Sachs had requested several extensions to a deadline for discussions to settle the dispute. The latest deadline is Nov. 8.

“At this juncture… parties are still considered to be in the amicable good faith discussions stage and therefore as an aggrieved party, the 1MDB Taskforce views Goldman Sachs’ initiation of arbitration proceedings as premature and without due consideration of necessary prerequisites,” 1MDB task force chairman Johari Abdul Ghani said in a statement.

Mr. Johari accused Goldman of trying to distract from the interim payment, and said the Malaysian government would respond to the matter accordingly.

Goldman Sachs lodged its suit less than two months after Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim threatened to take the company to court.

Malaysian and US authorities estimate some $4.5 billion were stolen from 1MDB between 2009 and 2014, in a globe-spanning scheme that implicated high-level government and banking officials in Malaysia and elsewhere.

Goldman had helped 1MDB raise $6.5 billion in two bond offerings, earning itself $600 million in fees, according to the US Justice Department.

The United States has been returning funds it has recovered from seized assets that were allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB money. — Reuters

Biden warns Iran, assures Israeli PM Netanyahu of aid to fight Hamas

US PRESIDENT JOSEPH R. BIDEN — WHITEHOUSE.GOV

WASHINGTON — US President Joseph R. Biden warned Iran to “be careful” on Wednesday and told Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States is sending more military assistance to help Israel fight Hamas militants.

Speaking to a group of Jewish community leaders, Mr. Biden for the first time connected the US deployment of a carrier fleet near to Israel to concerns Iran might seek to become involved, as Israel reels from an attack from Gaza by Hamas militants who killed more than 1,000 people in southern Israel.

“We moved the US carrier fleet to the eastern Mediterranean and we are sending more fighter jets to that region, and made it clear to the Iranians: Be careful,” he said.

US officials say they have not been able to establish a direct link between the Hamas attack but are searching to see if they can find one, since Hamas is supported by Tehran.

Mr. Biden also said that in his fourth phone call with Mr. Netanyahu in the five days since the Hamas attack took place on Saturday, he assured him that more military aid was on the way.

Mr. Biden and his team are grappling with how to gain the freedom of any potential American hostages held by Hamas. At least 22 US citizens were among the dead, the State Department confirmed, and at least 17 Americans are missing. The White House said the confirmed number of Americans who have died or are being held hostage could rise.

Many US lawmakers are eager to send Israel more military equipment but some are cool to funding Ukraine’s war to repel Russian invaders.

The White House has been considering a budget request tying money for these two conflicts together to increase the chances that the Ukraine assistance will be approved.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the parameters for an additional funding request to Congress had yet to be finalized.

In the near term, Washington can continue to support both Israel and Ukraine as it continues to fight Russia, but “we’re certainly running out of runway,” he said at a press briefing.

In emotional remarks a day earlier, Mr. Biden called the attack “an act of sheer evil,” and said that US military assistance was being sent to help Israel in its fight.

NBC News on Wednesday reported that the White House is preparing to seek supplemental funding from US lawmakers for those two countries, as well as for Taiwan and US border security. — Reuters

Most Japanese firms expect China’s economic slowdown to persist into 2025

REUTERS

TOKYO — Most Japanese companies expect a slowdown in China’s economy to persist into 2025, with nearly two thirds of firms that operate there looking to shift some production elsewhere in search of sales in other markets, according to a Reuters monthly poll.

That cautious outlook comes even though recent data suggests that an economy weighed down by infrastructure project debt and a downturn in property values has bottomed out. China’s factory activity in September expanded for the first time in six months, with sales growth accelerating in August.

Of 502 major Japanese companies surveyed by Reuters, 52% said they expected the slowdown in China to continue into 2025, with 17% predicting weaker economic growth to persist until the end of 2024. Only 5% said they expected a rebound by the end of the first quarter next year.

“Cargo shipments are stagnant, and it’s difficult for cargo handlers to take measures to tackle that,” a representative from a transport company said, on condition the company was not identified.

More than two thirds of household wealth in China is tied up in the property market, and with youth unemployment rising, consumers and companies have been reluctant to spend.

Analysts polled separately by Reuters last month, predicted the World’s No. 2 economy will grow by 5% this year and by 4.5% next year.

China is Japan’s biggest trading partner. The value of that cross-border economic activity jumped 14% to 43.8 trillion yen ($294 billion) last year, according to the Japanese government. Japanese companies also operate from more than 31,000 locations in the country.

Some 45% of the firms that responded to the survey said the slowdown in China had affected their businesses. In addition to those companies shifting production out of China, 12% said they were curbing capital investment there.

In Japan, 86% of the companies said they want Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to boost the economy with a stimulus package worth more than 10 trillion yen, with nearly a fifth calling for at least 30 trillion yen of spending, including on measures to tackle price rises and to help companies raise wages.

“Priority should be given to creating an environment where wages can be increased over the medium to long term on the assumption that prices will continue to rise,” said a manager at a wholesaler.

The Reuters Corporate Survey, conducted for Reuters by Nikkei Research between Sept. 27 and Oct. 6, canvassed 502 big non-financial Japanese firms.

They were polled on condition of anonymity, allowing respondents to speak more freely. — Reuters

Malaysia says TikTok fails to fully comply with local laws

STOCK PHOTO | Image by antonbe from Pixabay

KUALA LUMPUR — TikTok has not done enough to curb defamatory or misleading content in Malaysia, the communications minister said on Thursday, adding that the short video application had also failed to comply with several, unspecified local laws.

In a social media message posted after meeting TikTok representatives, Minister Fahmi Fadzil said TikTok also had to address issues related to content distribution and advertising purchases following complaints.

He said TikTok had assured him it would cooperate with the government and that its shortcomings were due to not having a representative in Malaysia at present.

Mr. Fahmi did not give any further details in the post.

A spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting or the minister’s remarks.

TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, has recently come under scrutiny in Southeast Asia, where Indonesia’s government last week halted transactions on its platform following a ban on e-commerce trade on social media and as Vietnam probes the app for “toxic” content.

Malaysia has increased scrutiny of online content in recent months as Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration vowed to curb what it deems provocative posts that touch on race, religion and royalty.

Earlier this year, the Malaysian government said it would take legal action against Facebook parent company Meta for violating the Communications and Multimedia Act, but dropped the plan after meetings with the company. — Reuters

NATO to respond if Baltic Sea pipeline damage deliberate

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the press in advance of the meetings of NATO Defence Ministers, June 14. — COURTESY OF NATO

HELSINKI/BRUSSELS — NATO will discuss damage to a gas pipeline and data cable running between member states Finland and Estonia, and will mount a “determined” response if a deliberate attack is proven, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.

Damage to the Balticconnector pipeline and telecommunications cable was confirmed on Tuesday after one of the two pipeline operators, Finland’s Gasgrid, noted a drop in pressure and possible leak on Sunday night during a storm.

Helsinki, which is investigating, has said the damage was probably caused by “outside activity.” That has stoked concern over regional energy security and pushed gas prices higher.

“The important thing now is to establish what happened and how this could happen,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels ahead of a meeting of the military alliance.

“If it is proven to be a deliberate attack on NATO-critical infrastructure, then this will be, of course, serious, but it will also be met by a united and determined response from NATO.”

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said “external marks” had been found on the seabed beside the damaged pipeline and that it was reviewing the movements of vessels in the area at the time of the rupture.

“We are now focusing on the technical investigation of the pipe damage site and examining the seabed at the scene,” bureau chief Robin Lardot told reporters on Wednesday.

Risto Lohi, the bureau’s chief investigator, told a news conference that anchor damage had not been ruled out, adding: “At the moment it looks like the damage was caused by mechanical force, not an explosion.”

The pipeline runs between Inkoo in Finland and Paldiski in Estonia across the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea which stretches eastward into Russian waters and ends at the port of St Petersburg.

TALKS THURSDAY
NATO defense ministers will discuss the damage on Thursday when they gather for a second day of meetings in Brussels, Finnish defense minister Antti Hakkanen told reporters late on Wednesday.

“We do know that the infrastructure is vulnerable and needs to be better protected,” Mr. Hakkanen said.

Balticconnector is jointly operated by Estonian electricity and gas system operator Elering and Finnish gas transmission system operator Gasgrid, which each own half of the pipeline.

The operators said in a statement that planning and carrying out repairs to the pipeline would take at least five months, with gas transfers unlikely to resume before April.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the incident as “disturbing” and told a regular news briefing that the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that cross the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany have set a dangerous precedent.

Those larger gas pipelines were damaged by explosions that authorities have said were caused by sabotage.

Henri Vanhanen, research fellow at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, said the central issue was how NATO would react if there was evidence that a state actor was behind the new pipeline damage.

“I think the big question in the long term is … do we have a clear set of potential countermeasures for such (sabotage) activities? What is the deterrence?” he said.

President Sauli Niinisto and other officials were briefed on Wednesday and preparedness levels raised at critical infrastructure facilities, the Finnish government said. Meanwhile, Norway and Lithuania moved to tighten security at onshore energy installations.

PIPELINE ‘PULLED FROM ONE SIDE’
“It can clearly be seen that these damages are caused by quite heavy force,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told Reuters, with possible causes including “mechanical impact or mechanical destruction.”

The pipeline and telecoms cable run in parallel at a “significant” distance from each other, according to the cable operator, Elisa.

The two were damaged “within the same time frame” early on Sunday, Finnish investigators said, with the pipeline break believed to have been in Finnish waters while the cable breach was in Estonian waters.

The pipeline, encased in concrete for protection, looks like “someone tore it on the side”, Estonian Navy Commander Juri Saska told public broadcaster ERR. “The concrete has broken, or peeled off, specifically at that point of injury.”

The damage would not impact Finland’s electricity system, grid operator Fingrid said. Gas accounts for 5% of Finland’s energy needs.

The Baltic connector pipeline opened in December 2019 to help integrate gas markets in the region, giving Finland and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania more flexibility of supply. — Reuters

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US to attend Beijing defense forum in latest sign of improving ties

REUTERS

WASHINGTON — The United States says it has accepted an invitation to attend China’s top annual security forum in late October, the latest sign of potentially warming ties between the two countries’ militaries.

Washington has been eager to revive military-to-military communications with China, its main strategic rival, and three sources familiar with the matter said Beijing had invited Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to attend its Xiangshan forum, scheduled for Oct. 29 – 31.

The United States, however, won’t send Austin to the event, styled by Beijing as its answer to Singapore’s annual Shangri-La Dialogue, where in late May China’s defense minister Li Shangfu – who has since disappeared from public – declined a formal meeting with the U.S. defense secretary.

Although the invitation could be intended to counter U.S. criticism that China has been slow to rebuild military engagement after cutting most ties following then-U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, it may also signal a desire by Beijing to improve relations, analysts say.

U.S. officials have suggested recently there are “limited” early signs that better military communications could be restored.

The Pentagon did not say whom China had invited or who from the U.S. side would attend, and China’s embassy in Washington also declined to give details.

In a statement to Reuters, the Pentagon said it “welcomes the opportunity to engage” with representatives from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the Xiangshan forum on ensuring open and reliable lines of communication and crisis communications channels.

“The Department responded to the PRC’s August invitation for Department officials to participate in the Beijing Xiangshan Forum with the Department’s intent to participate at a level consistent with past precedent,” it said.

In 2019, the last time the forum was held, then-U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China Chad Sbragia attended, making him the most senior U.S. official to date to participate.

Before 2019, the U.S. often sent embassy defense attaches.

CHINA’S DEFENSE MINISTER
As China’s defense minister, Li typically would give a keynote speech at the forum and meet with delegations. But Reuters reported in September that he was put under investigation over corrupt procurement of military equipment.

Beijing has offered no official explanation about Li’s fate and his disappearance raises questions about how this year’s forum will be conducted.

Sbragia, who plans to attend the forum as a former official, told Reuters he received an updated invitation with an agenda that didn’t have earlier references to a speech by Li, who since 2018 has been under U.S. sanctions over Beijing’s purchase of combat aircraft and equipment from Russia. Those sanctions had been an obstacle in China’s eyes to a meeting with Austin.

China was probably aware that Austin was unlikely to attend, but it would not have extended such an invitation if it weren’t prepared for a meeting, Sbragia said.

“It probably shows that there is a significant amount of anxiety and demand that they try to reach some pattern of stable defense relations with the United States,” he said.

China has quietly issued invitations to senior U.S. officials in the past – including defense secretaries – to attend the event, held in the hills away from Beijing’s busy downtown.

Washington typically has not wanted to lend U.S. credibility to the forum by dispatching high-level delegates, a source of frustration for Beijing, which uses the conference to try to shape global discussions on defense and security issues.

China’s embassy in Washington said the forum would provide parties “an equal opportunity to express their views on advancing security cooperation” under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative, which Washington has criticized.

“China and the U.S. have been maintaining candid and effective communications through military diplomatic channels,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. — Reuters

Internet companies report biggest-ever denial of service operation

REUTERS

WASHINGTON — Internet companies Google, Amazon and Cloudflare say they have weathered the internet’s largest-known denial of service attack and are sounding the alarm over a new technique they warn could easily cause widespread disruption.

Alphabet Inc-owned Google said in a blog post published Tuesday that its cloud services had parried an avalanche of rogue traffic more than seven times the size of the previous record-breaking attack thwarted last year.

Internet protection company Cloudflare Inc said the attack was “three times larger than any previous attack we’ve observed.” Amazon.com Inc’s web services division also confirmed being hit by “a new type of distributed denial of service (DDoS) event.”

All three said the attack began in late August; Google said it was ongoing.

Denial of service is among the web’s most basic form of attack and it works by simply overwhelming targeted servers with a firehose of bogus requests for data, making it impossible for legitimate web traffic to get through.

As the online world has developed, so too has the power of denial-of-service operations, some of which can generate millions of bogus requests per second. The recent attacks measured by Google, Cloudflare and Amazon were capable of generating hundreds of millions of request per second.

Google said in its blog post that only two minutes of one such attack “generated more requests than the total number of article views reported by Wikipedia during the entire month of September 2023.” Cloudflare said the attack was of a magnitude that “has never been seen before.”

All three companies said the supersized attacks were enabled by a weakness in HTTP/2 – a newer version of the HTTP network protocol that underpins the World Wide Web – that makes servers particularly vulnerable to rogue requests.

The firms urged companies to update their web servers to ensure that they do not remain vulnerable.

None of the three companies said who was responsible for the denial-of-service attacks, which have historically been difficult to pin down.

If cleverly aimed and not successfully countered, such attacks can lead to widespread disruption. In 2016, an attack attributed to the “Mirai” network of hijacked devices hit domain name service Dyn, disrupting a swathe of high-profile websites.

The U.S. government’s cybersecurity watchdog, CISA, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. — Reuters

Governments join rescue effort as airlines face Israel insurance alert

REUTERS

Governments and airlines scrambled to lay on flights to evacuate thousands of tourists from Israel and repatriate the country’s citizens, as the industry faced a warning over insurance cover in the wake of weekend attacks.

Israeli flag carrier El Al said it would operate 12 extra flights on Wednesday and Thursday to and from Athens, Rome, Madrid, Bucharest, New York, Paris, Larnaca and Istanbul.

Its low-cost unit Sun Dor also plans rescue flights from Istanbul. El Al had already announced an additional flight from New York and six flights to and from Larnaca.

The latest move came as the combined death toll reported by both sides following the weekend attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas and retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces reached more than 2,000 people.

Most foreign airlines have suspended or curtailed services, leaving passengers uncertain how to leave or reach the country and consular services struggling to keep up with demand for assistance, with priority given to those with missing relatives.

Israel’s parliamentary finance committee said late on Tuesday it would debate authorizing state guarantees for providing war risk insurance for Israeli airlines.

The panel said insurance companies had indicated they were entitled to cancel cover with seven days’ notice. Airline executives said some cover was still available.

A senior official at insurance industry body Lloyd’s Market Association said Israel is not on a commonly used list of high-risk areas for aviation, but that it made sense for underwriters to seek to control their exposure given the escalating violence.

“Some have therefore given notice to amend terms and conditions,” Neil Roberts, head of marine & aviation, said.

British Airways said it would suspend flights to Tel Aviv after diverting a flight from London back to Britain shortly before it was due to reach Tel Aviv, citing security concerns.

In an unusual move, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told reporters he had brought 34 Czechs back from Israel with him on his government plane after he stopped in the country on the way back from a conference in Oman.

The minister, who the Czech government said was the first foreign official to visit Israel since the attacks, did not rule out sending another repatriation flight to Israel.

Lipavsky arrived in Israel on Tuesday afternoon and landed in Prague early on Wednesday morning.

“I spoke to our citizens. They tried to contact the airlines several times, but couldn’t get through,” said Lipavsky.

Denmark said it would offer to evacuate its citizens as well as holders of permanent residency in Denmark from Israel and occupied Palestinian territories following the attack by Hamas.

The country is preparing to send a C-130 Hercules military transporter to Israel, a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

El Al, whose aircraft are equipped with laser-based anti-missile systems, said earlier this week it was handling many Israeli customers of foreign companies whose flights had been cancelled.

“We have increased flights in several hubs in the world and will continue to increase as much as we can.”

RESCUE FLIGHTS
Some governments were also in discussion with airlines to mount special relief flights.

Lufthansa plans special flights on Thursday and Friday, people familiar with the matter said late on Tuesday, following negotiations between German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Washington remains in talks with U.S. airlines about flights to Israel.

Norwegian Air, which has suspended normal flights to and from Israel until Dec. 19, said it was organizing an extra flight from Tel Aviv to Oslo to fetch Norwegian and other Nordic citizens.

A spokesperson for Dubai’s Emirates said it was reducing daily connections to Tel Aviv to once a day from three times daily “for operational reasons” and safety was its top priority.

Low-cost affiliate flydubai said it was halving flights.

But in neighboring Abu Dhabi, Etihad Airways said it had resumed scheduled services on Wednesday and remained in contact with authorities and “security intelligence providers”.

Passengers have complained of mounting costs especially for leaving Israel, but airlines deny driving up prices.

El Al said it was looking to keep prices low for reservists looking to fly back into Israel, with the highest fare topping $900 from the United States.

However, one-way commercial flights out of Israel to places like London and New York were in the thousands of dollars as airlines cut schedules, according to online booking networks.

The scramble for seats comes at a time when airline capacity is tight globally because of supply chain shortages left by COVID-19, with some transatlantic fares even higher than the sums being quoted for flights out of Israel. — Reuters

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