India evacuates 75 of its citizens as rebels take over Syria

The Ministry of External Affairs said that the Indian nationals safely crossed over to Lebanon and will return by available commercial flights to India.

Opposition fighters celebrate as they burn down a military court in Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo)

India evacuated 75 of its citizens from Syria, including pilgrims from Jammu and Kashmir, as Islamist rebels captured power in Damascus and President Bashar Al Assad fled the country.

This is a signal towards Indian government’s assessment of the security and political situation in Syria.

The Ministry of External Affairs said that the Indian nationals safely crossed over to Lebanon and will return by available commercial flights to India.

A statement from MEA said informed that the evacuation was “following recent developments in that country”.

“The evacuees included 44 ‘zaireen’ from Jammu & Kashmir who were stranded at Saida Zainab. All Indian nationals have safely crossed over to Lebanon and will return by available commercial flights to India,” it said.

It added that the evacuation, coordinated by the embassies of India in Damascus and Beirut, was put into effect following “our assessment of the security situation and requests from Indian nationals in Syria”. This is the first security assessment of the internal situation of Syria.

“The Government of India accords the highest priority to the safety and security of Indian nationals abroad. Indian nationals remaining in Syria are advised to stay in touch with the Indian Embassy in Damascus at their emergency helpline number +963 993385973 (also on WhatsApp) and email ID (hoc.damascus@mea.gov.in) for updates. The Government will continue to monitor the situation closely,” the statement read.

What has happened in Syria?

A civil war and 14 days are all it took for President Assad’s government to fall. Late in November, developments in Syria had caused alarm when an armed set of forces comprising the Syrian opposition began gaining ground in major cities one by one in the next few days. On Sunday (December 8), the Assad government, whose Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party had been in power since the 1960s, fell.

Assad, ruling the country since 2000, having inherited the legacy from his father Hafez al-Assad since 1971, was forced to flee the country as the Islamist rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham marched into the Syrian capital.

In a statement aired on Syrian state television, a group of opposition fighters said they have “liberated” Damascus and overthrown the “tyrant al-Assad,” adding that all detainees held in the regime’s prisons have been released.

HTS’s al-Jawlani has, so far, tried to assuage the fears of the minorities. On November 29, he told soldiers, after the takeover of Aleppo, the “first priority is to protect the property and lives of civilians and to establish security and calm the fears of people from all sects”.

 

8-year-old girl dies of ‘food poisoning’ as 35 students of Chhattisgarh residential school fall ill

In the early hours of Monday, some students at Rukhmini Ashram school in Dhanora village started complaining of stomach pain and vomiting.

After being admitted to the Bijapur district hospital by around 11 am, many of the students had their vomiting brought under control by the doctors.

An eight-year-old girl died late on Monday night, hours after she and 34 other students of a government-aided residential school in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district were admitted to hospital over suspected food poisoning.

In the early hours of Monday, some students at Rukhmini Ashram school in Dhanora village started complaining of stomach pain and vomiting. In the morning, 35 of the students were taken to the local health centre, from where they were referred to the district hospital.

After being admitted to the Bijapur district hospital by around 11 am, many of the students had their vomiting brought under control by the doctors.

At around 10 pm on Monday, one of the students, Shivani Telam, was referred to a different hospital in Jagdalpur city of Bastar district, about 286 km away. Shivani died at around midnight while being taken to Jagdalpur in an ambulance.

Nine other children are in the ICU.

Bijapur Collector Sambit Mishra told The Indian Express, “We are awaiting the postmortem report to know the exact cause of death. We will take appropriate action.”

A doctor at the district hospital said they were still trying to determine what had caused the children to fall ill. “We could not collect the samples of the food eaten by the children, except for the rice. During the day (on Sunday), they ate kheer, puri, chana and chole. They had eaten paneer at night, which could have gone bad,” the doctor said.

“Several children also had fever, so we also tested them for malaria, but they tested negative,” he said.

District Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr B R Pujari said, “It could be something beyond food poisoning. We could not get any samples of the food… but we will find out what went wrong.”

Their school had a total of 88 students studying and staying there. It was established in 1976, is run by an NGO, and is aided by the government.

 It Seems Like Things Are Actually Cooling Down Between Israel and Iran

A man walks past a banner depicting missiles along a street in Tehran, Iran, on Friday. AFP/Getty Images

A rare bit of calming news from the Middle East: It seems that neither Israel nor Iran wants to widen the war.

The odds of a direct conflict between the region’s two most powerful countries seemed high for much of this month. On April 1, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate in Syria, killing seven senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On April 13, Iran retaliated by launching a massive, multipronged attack—more than 300 missiles and drones, including 110 ballistic missiles—against Israel. Almost all the incoming weapons were shot down (a remarkable feat by U.S., Israeli, British, French, and Jordanian air defenses), no one was killed, and very little damage was sustained, and at just one air base. Still, the attack, which could have been deadly, marked the first time Iran had ever attacked Israeli territory. Israel felt the need to do something in response.

In the wee hours on Friday, three drones flew over an air base in the Isfahan district of southern Iran, not very far from a critical nuclear facility. Iran says they were all shot down. Maybe so, maybe not. The key facts are these: Israel has not acknowledged launching the drones—nor has Iran accused Israel of doing so. In fact, one senior Iranian official blamed the deed on “infiltrators” who fired the drones from inside Iran.

The point is, the widespread fears of mutual escalation—one airstrike sparking another, which sparks another, then another, on and on, for reasons of revenge, pride, a compulsion to “restore deterrence,” or whatever—have proved baseless, at least for now.

After the Saturday night air raid, an Iranian official warned Israel not to retaliate. Even a small Israeli attack, he said, would trigger a much more massive counterstrike from Tehran. President Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to heed the warning. Most Israelis felt they had to do something to deter future Iranian attacks. They wound up doing about as little as a powerfully armed country can do while still doing something—and Iran pretended that Israel didn’t launch the attack anyway, thus evading their pledge to respond to any such attack massively.

In sum, Iran proved that it can mount a massive attack on Israel, while Israel proved that its weapons have the range to strike targets inside Iran. That seemed to be enough for both sides. The equilibrium has thus been restored, at least for now.

As of midday Friday, the Israeli government seemed content to go along with the game, declining to comment on the drone strike. An exception was Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultra-right-wing national security minister, who had pushed for a much more forceful response. “Lame!” he tweeted Friday morning in reference to the three-drone airstrike—thus acknowledging that Israel had launched the attack and that some senior officials wanted to do more. Netanyahu usually endorses Ben-Gvir’s radically hawkish statements, or at least doesn’t dispute them. But this time, Channel 12, Israel’s leading TV news station, reported that officials in the prime minister’s inner circle are very upset with the tweet, saying that it damaged Israel’s national security and slamming Ben-Gvir generally as “childish” and “irrelevant to any discussion.”

Meanwhile, the aftereffects of Iran’s attack last weekend continue to benefit Israel. On Wednesday, 48 countries signed a statement condemning Iran for its attack on Israel. The palpable sign of Israel’s continued vulnerability is also likely to boost approval of President Biden’s emergency military-aid package, which the House will take up on Saturday. Before the attack, many of those countries would have been reluctant to endorse any expression of support for Israel—and Biden’s aid package was losing support—as a result of Israel’s “over-the-top” military tactics (as even Biden called them) in Gaza.

The prospect of a major war between Iran and Israel distracted the world’s focus from the fighting and suffering in Gaza, but probably not for long. U.S. and Israeli officials remain locked in disagreement over how to rout the last battalion of Hamas terrorists from the town of Rafah on Gaza’s southern tip, where more than 1 million civilians—most of them refugees from the northern towns—are crowded, many of them starving. Netanyahu and the other members of his war Cabinet want to mount a major offensive against Rafah. Biden and his aides urge them not to take that step unless they come up with a way to avoid killing tens of thousands of the civilians. The Israelis have not come up with any such way. Nor have the Americans thought up a way to rout Hamas’ last battalion without an armed offensive.

This is why U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats continue to hammer out a plan for a cease-fire, combined with an exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Hamas has rejected several proposals, most of them endorsed by Israel. Its one counteroffer—a cease-fire that delays the release of any hostages until all Israeli troops have withdrawn from Gaza—is unacceptable to Israel.

 Bitcoin just completed its fourth-ever 'halving,' here’s what investors need to watch now

The Bitcoin network on Friday night slashed the incentives rewarded to miners in half for the fourth time in its history.

The celebrated event, which takes place about once every four years as mandated in the Bitcoin code, is designed to slow the issuance of bitcoins, thereby creating a scarcity effect and allowing the cryptocurrency to maintain its digital gold-like quality.

There may be some speculative trading on the event itself. JPMorgan said it expects to see some downside in bitcoin post-halving and Deutsche Bank said it "does not expect prices to increase significantly." However, the impact may be bigger months from now, even if bitcoin continues its trend of diminishing returns from its halving day to its cycle top. Two key things to watch will be the block reward and the hash rate.

"While the upcoming Bitcoin halving will create a supply shock as the previous ones had, we believe its impact on the cryptocurrency's price could be magnified by the concurrent demand shock created by the emergence of spot bitcoin ETFs," said Benchmark's Mark Palmer.

The bigger immediate impact will be to the miners themselves, he added. They're the ones that run the machines that do the work of recording new blocks of bitcoin transactions and adding them to the global ledger, also known as the blockchain.

"Miners with access to inexpensive, reliable power sources are well positioned to navigate the post-halving market dynamics," said Maxim's Matthew Galinko in a note Friday. "Some miners, many that are not public, could exit the market with a combination of poor access to power, efficient machines, and capital. Miners with capital and relatively expensive power will likely find opportunities in the wake of potential consolidation and disruption driven by the halving."

The block reward

Miners have two incentives to mine: transaction fees that are paid voluntarily by senders (for faster settlement) and mining rewards — 3.125 newly created bitcoins, or about $200,000 as of Friday evening, when the mining reward shrunk from 6.25 bitcoins. The incentive was initially 50 bitcoins.

The reduction in the block rewards leads to a reduction in the supply of bitcoin by slowing the pace at which new coins are created, helping maintain the idea of bitcoin as digital gold — whose finite supply helps determine its value. Eventually, the number of bitcoins in circulation will cap at 21 million, per the Bitcoin code. There are about 19.6 million in circulation today.

"Miners utilize powerful, specialized computer hardware to validate transactions on the Bitcoin network and record them permanently on the blockchain," Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said. "This process, known as mining, rewards miners with newly minted bitcoins. But with each halving, the reward to mining is decreased to maintain scarcity and control the cryptocurrency's inflation rate over time."

The hash rate

Historically after a halving, the Bitcoin hash rate – or the total computational power used by miners to process transactions on the Bitcoin network – has fallen, pricing some miners out of the market. It generally recovers in the medium term, however, Laboure pointed out.

The network hash rate has been hitting all-time highs for months as miners tried to take market share ahead of the halving. Growth in the Bitcoin hash rate dilutes individual miners' contribution to the network hash rate.

"In the past three halvings, the network recovered its pre-halving hash rate levels within an average of 57 days," she said. "It is also likely that the current elevated prices of bitcoin may limit this short-term dip in the hash rate, as bitcoin miners enjoy record high profits in the lead-up to the halving."

Palmer said the impact of the halving on bitcoin miners' economics could be "more than offset over time" if bitcoin's price rallies keep pushing the cryptocurrency to new highs in the months ahead.

 ‘It’s Clearly Bleak’: Stocks Notch Longest Losing Streak in Months

A rally at the start of the year has given way to worries on Wall Street about economics and geopolitics.

Stocks suffered their longest losing streak of the year, as geopolitical turmoil rattled Wall Street and investors slashed their bets on the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates any time soon.

The S&P 500 fell 0.9 percent on Friday, its sixth consecutive decline, marking its worst run since October 2022.

The slide dragged the S&P 500 down by just over 3 percent for the week, a third straight weekly decline. By that measure, it is the longest weekly losing streak for the index since September, when concerns over rising government debt and a potential government shutdown compounded worries about the effects of high interest rates.

Those fears dissipated toward the end of last year as inflation cooled and investors began to bet that the Fed would soon cut rates, prompting a ferocious stock rally in the first three months of 2024.

But this month, worries that stubborn inflation would lead the Fed to keep rates high have returned, compounded by the widening conflict in the Middle East, with Israel striking Iran early on Friday.

“It’s clearly bleak,” said Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at National Alliance Securities.

Investors have pulled roughly $21 billion out of funds that invest in U.S. stocks over the two weeks through Wednesday, according to data from EPFR Global, which tracks fund flows. That compares to an inflow of around $80 billion for the year through early April. And the unease is not just apparent in the stock market.

U.S. government bond yields, which underpin interest rates for a wide variety of loans, have been rising. The average rate on 30-year mortgages, the most popular home loan in the United States, rose above 7 percent on Thursday for the first time this year.

The dollar is also markedly higher, putting pressure on countries that import goods from the United States and issue dollar-denominated debt. And oil prices, stoked by geopolitical tensions, are up more than 13 percent since the start of the year.

“There is nothing that looks good right now,” Mr. Brenner said.

Recent reports showing hotter-than-expected inflation have altered investors’ forecasts for the Fed, which has kept its key rate near a two-decade high. “The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at an event in Washington on Tuesday.

Economists at Société Générale no longer expect the Fed to cut rates this year. BNP Paribas and Wells Fargo economists have also dialed down their expectations for cuts.

Traders in futures markets, which allow investors to bet on where interest rates are headed, are wagering on one, and perhaps two, quarter-point cuts by the end of the year. At the start of the year, traders were expecting six cuts over that period.

At first, the shift appeared to be welcomed by stock investors. A strong economy, all else equal, is good for the stock market, and while some inflation data had started to buck the trend earlier this year it wasn’t enough to disrupt the broader cooling that took hold in 2023. But recent inflation reports have continued to disappointed investors and economists and become harder to ignore.

John Williams, the president of the New York Fed, said this week that it was possible that another increase, rather than a cut, to rates might be warranted if inflation remained sticky, even if that wasn’t what he considered the most likely scenario. Other officials have noted that the Fed may have to wait until much later this year, or even 2025, to begin easing rates.

So far, worries have yet to intensify to the point of threatening the strength of the U.S. economy. Although the S&P 500 has fallen 5.5 percent this month, it remains more than 4 percent higher for the year.

And a recent survey of fund managers around the world by Bank of America showed the most optimism since January 2022, with respondents expecting global growth to accelerate. The biggest risk, according to the respondents, is a rise in inflation that could keep interest rates elevated, squeezing growth abroad and at home.

Trump Media tells shareholders how to block their DJT stock being loaned to short sellers

 Trump Media tells shareholders how to block their DJT stock being loaned to short sellers

 In a Manhattan Court, a Jury Is Picked to Judge a President

Justice Juan M. Merchan warned against identifying the people who might judge Donald J. Trump, who regularly attacks the justice system.

Prosecutors have asked that Donald J. Trump be punished for promoting attacks on the jury system and the court.Credit...Pool photo by Brendan McDermid

At 4:34 p.m. on Thursday, a jury of 12 citizens was selected to determine the fate of an indicted former president for the first time in American history, a moment that could shape the nation’s political and legal landscapes for generations to come.

The dozen New Yorkers will sit in judgment of Donald J. Trump, the 45th president turned criminal defendant, who has been accused of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. If the jurors convict Mr. Trump, he could face up to four years in prison, even as he seeks to reclaim the White House as the presumptive Republican nominee.

“We have our jury,” Justice Juan M. Merchan proclaimed as the 12th juror was added.

He then swore the seven men and five women to an oath that they would render a fair and impartial verdict, which they accepted with sober expressions as Mr. Trump stared from the defense table. The jurors could hear opening arguments as soon as Monday.

The selection of the 12 capped a seesaw day in which the judge first excused two people who had been seated earlier in the week, and then hours later replaced them with two new faces and more.

The moment was both routine and never before seen, an act performed every day in courthouses around the country, but never for a former president, a symbol and source of the nation’s political divide.

Mr. Trump, under the Constitution, is entitled to a fair trial by a jury of his peers. And yet he is peerless, a singular force in American politics who was twice impeached and brought democracy to the brink when he refused to accept his election defeat.

Now, just as he bent the political world to his will, Mr. Trump is testing the limits of the American justice system, assailing the integrity of jury and judge alike. His attacks have emboldened his base, and might well resonate more broadly on the campaign trial.

But it will be the 12 men and women of the jury — in Mr. Trump’s hometown — who will first decide his fate, before millions more do so at the polls.

The jury’s makeup and the security of its members will be central to the landmark case. Mr. Trump claims he cannot receive a fair trial in one of the nation’s most Democratic counties, a place where he is deeply unpopular, though some of the jurors who ultimately landed on the panel praised him.

One man said during the selection that he believed the former president had done some good for the country, adding, “it goes both ways.” Another juror, in a possible first for the country, said he didn’t have an opinion on Mr. Trump.

The final 12 were a collection of Manhattanites as eclectic as the city itself. They are Black, Asian, white, male, female, middle-aged and young, including one woman in her first job out of college. They work in finance, education, health care and the law. And they live, among other places, in Harlem, Chelsea, the Upper East Side and Murray Hill.

One alternate was also picked before court adjourned. The judge plans to conclude jury selection on Friday, when the lawyers will select the remaining five alternates.

The long day got off to an inauspicious start as Justice Merchan excused the two jurors, including a woman who had developed concerns about her identity being revealed. That fear, she added, might compromise her fairness and “decision-making in the courtroom,” prompting the judge to excuse her.

The precise reason the judge dismissed the other juror was not clear, but prosecutors had raised concerns about the credibility of answers he had given to questions about himself. Asked outside the courthouse whether he believed he should have been dismissed, the man, who declined to give his name, replied, “Nope.”

The dismissals underscored the intense pressure of serving on this particular panel. Jurors are risking their safety and their privacy to sit in judgment of a former commander in chief who is now their fellow citizen, a heavy responsibility that could unnerve even the most seen-it-all New Yorkers.

During jury selection, prospective members are routinely excused by the dozens. And once a trial formally begins, it is not unheard-of to lose a juror for reasons such as illness or violating a judge’s order not to read about the proceeding. But losing two in one day, before opening arguments even began, was unusual — one of many small ways in which this trial will stand apart.

The ousters appeared to rankle the judge, who has striven to keep the trial on schedule. He said he thought the woman who declined to serve would have “been a very good juror.”

Although the judge has kept prospective jurors’ names private, they disclosed their employers and other identifying information in open court. But Justice Merchan instructed reporters to no longer divulge prospective jurors’ current or past employers, a decision that some media law experts questioned.

Inside a chilly courtroom on Thursday, as lawyers on both sides scrutinized a new round of prospective jurors, Mr. Trump stared intently at the jury box and prodded his lawyers, prompting one, Todd Blanche, to shake his head in response.

 U.S. Mortgage Rates Jump Above 7% for the First Time This Year

Rates on 30-year mortgages — the most common kind among U.S. homeowners — surpassed the 7 percent mark on Thursday, a troublesome sign for an already tight housing market.

Mortgage rates rose above 7 percent for the first time this year, crossing a symbolically concerning threshold that threatens to keep millions of potential home buyers and sellers on the sidelines of a U.S. housing market that is increasingly showing signs of slowing.

The average rate on 30-year mortgages, the most popular home loan in the United States, rose to 7.1 percent this week, Freddie Mac reported on Thursday, the highest since November. Mortgage rates reached a recent high of nearly 8 percent late last year — a level not seen since 2000.

As mortgage rates have risen in recent months, making homeownership costlier for buyers, potential sellers who may feel locked into lower rates on their existing loans have been keeping their houses off the market, in effect pushing prices higher, too. Combined, the forces have fed into a broader feeling of frustration about the economy, at a time when inflation has remained hotter than expected.

“Potential home buyers are deciding whether to buy before rates rise even more, or hold off in hopes of decreases later in the year,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a statement. “It remains unclear how many home buyers can withstand increasing rates in the future.”

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At the same time, the market has slowed. Sales of existing homes fell by 4.3 percent in March and 3.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.

In April 2021, mortgage rates were at about 3 percent, less than half the current rate. They began to climb that year and continued to rise in 2022 when the Federal Reserve started raising its benchmark rate in an effort to combat inflation. Although inflation has since cooled significantly, it’s still above the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The Fed has signaled in recent months that it may keep the cost of borrowing higher for longer amid stubborn inflation. The Fed’s benchmark interest rate is currently the highest it’s been in 22 years.

Mortgage lenders generally watch the 10-year Treasury bond, which is tied to mortgage rates, and expectations that the Fed will keep rates high has pushed up Treasury yields. The 10-year Treasury yield has soared since the start of the year, now sitting at about 4.6 percent.

The N.A.R. agreed to settle litigation last month that would eliminate the standard sales commission, a move housing experts say could bring down home prices. Sellers currently pay a 5 or 6 percent commission to a real estate agent, a cost that’s typically passed onto the buyer through a higher sticker price.

J. Edward Moreno is a business reporter at The Times. More about J. Edward Moreno

 UK set to ban tobacco sales for a ‘smoke-free’ generation. Will it work?

The UK’s smoking ban aims to phase out sales of tobacco, which is one of the main causes of cancer deaths in Britain.

A woman smokes in Trafalgar Square in central London [File: Toby Melville/Reuters]

Britain is set to impose tough measures to stub out smoking, which has emerged as one of the biggest causes of cancer deaths in the country.

Parliament approved the government’s “historic” plans to create a “smoke-free” generation on Tuesday in a bid to reduce the number of people dying from smoking-related diseases, a big burden on the country’s publicly funded National Health Service (NHS).

 Dubai flooding hobbles major airport's operations as "historic weather event" brings torrential rains to UAE

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded out Dubai International Airport, disrupting travel through the world's busiest airfield for international travel. The state-run WAM news agency called the rain Tuesday "a historic weather event" that surpassed "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949." 

The rains began late Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with some 0.79 inches of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport. The storms intensified around 9 a.m. local time Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city.

Flooding impacts Dubai International Airport

By the end of Tuesday, more than 5.59 inches of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees just 3.73 inches of rain fall at Dubai International Airport, a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates.

At the airport, standing water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed. Arrivals were halted Tuesday night and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.

TOPSHOT-UAE-BAHRAIN-OMAN-WEATHER-FLOOD 
Motorisits drive along a flooded street following heavy rains in Dubai, early on April 17, 2024.

The airport said in a series of social media posts that all operations were halted for about 25 minutes on Tuesday afternoon and that all arrivals would be diverted after that "until the weather conditions improve." Late Wednesday morning, the airport and the flagship carrier Emirates were still warning travelers not to come to the airport unless absolutely necessary, saying all flight check-in was still suspended.

"Flights continue to be delayed and diverted. Please check your flight status directly with your airline," the airport said in a tweet. "We are working hard to recover operations as quickly as possible in very challenging conditions." 

One couple, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in a country with strict laws that criminalize critical speech, called the situation at the airport "absolute carnage."

"You cannot get a taxi. There's people sleeping in the Metro station. There's people sleeping in the airport," the man said Wednesday.

They ended up getting a taxi to near their home some 18 miles away, but floodwater on the road stopped them. A bystander helped them over a highway barrier with their carry-on luggage, the bottles of gin they picked up from a duty-free store clinking away.

Passengers wait at a flight connection desk at Dubai International Airport, April 17, 2024, amid flight delays and cancelations caused by flash flooding brought by a historic rain storm.

Paul Griffiths, the airport's CEO, acknowledged continued issues with flooding Wednesday morning, saying every place an aircraft could be safely parked was taken. Some aircraft had been diverted to Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central, the city-state's second airfield.

"It remains an incredibly challenging time. In living memory, I don't think anyone has ever seen conditions like it," Griffiths told the state-owned talk radio station Dubai Eye. "We are in uncharted territory, but I can assure everyone we are working as hard as we possibly can to make sure our customers and staff are looked after."

Did "cloud-seeding" contribute?

Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the rains were acute across the UAE. One reason may have been "cloud seeding," in which small planes flown by the government go through clouds burning special salt flares. Those flares can increase precipitation.

Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Center for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rains. The center did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday, though flight-tracking data analyzed by the AP showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE's cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Sunday.

The UAE, which relies heavily on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.

Flooding closes schools across UAE

Schools across the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, largely shut ahead of the storm and government employees were largely working remotely if they could. Many workers stayed home as well, though some ventured out, with the unfortunate ones stalling out their vehicles in deeper-than-expected water covering some roads.

Cars are seen on a flooded street during a rainstorm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, April 16, 2024.

Authorities sent tanker trucks out into the streets and highways to pump away the water. Water poured into some homes, forcing people to bail out their houses.

The country's hereditary rulers offered no overall damage or injury information for the nation, as some people slept in their flooded vehicles Tuesday night. In Ras al-Khaimah, the country's northernmost emirate, police said a 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.

Fujairah, an emirate on the UAE's eastern coast, saw the heaviest rainfall Tuesday with 5.7 inches falling there.

Authorities canceled school and the government instituted remote work again for Wednesday.

Rain is unusual in the UAE, an arid, Arabian Peninsula nation, but occurs periodically during the cooler winter months. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding.

Meanwhile in neighboring Oman, a sultanate that rests on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, at least 19 people were killed in heavy rains in recent days, according to a statement Wednesday from the country's National Committee for Emergency Management. That includes some 10 schoolchildren swept away in a vehicle with an adult, prompting condolences from rulers across the region.

 Stock futures are little changed after S&P 500 posts a fourth losing day: Live updates

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 16, 2023. 

Stock futures traded near the flatline on Wednesday evening after the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite logged a fourth straight day of losses.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 added 0.04%, while Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.1%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were little changed.

In extended trading, credit bureau Equifax declined more than 9% on disappointing second-quarter guidance that missed Wall Street estimates. Shares of Las Vegas Sands slipped nearly 3% after first-quarter revenue narrowly beat analysts' forecasts.

Tech stocks struggled on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite registering their fourth consecutive losing session. Nvidia pulled both indexes lower, as the artificial intelligence play dropped nearly 4%. The 30-stock Dow fell for its seventh session in eight.

Wednesday's market pullback adds to a more difficult second quarter on Wall Street. All three major indexes are lower so far in April, in stark contrast to the stronger-than-expected market performance seen in the first quarter. The Dow, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have also closed below their respective 50-day moving averages.

"The initial support for the S&P on that breakdown was 5000 or just below," JPMorgan head of technical strategy Jason Hunter said on "Closing Bell" Wednesday. "Now the question is: Does a bounce develop from there … and if it does, is it able to get back above the breakdown levels — the 50-day moving average, the area where it gapped down from?" He said he's watching the 5,150 to 5,200 level of the S&P 500 as key resistance.

On the economic front, initial jobless claims data will be due on Thursday morning, and the existing home sales report for March is also out.

Earnings season also heats up with Alaska Air Group and KeyCorp reporting results before the bell, followed by Netflix in the afternoon.

 

U.S. to hit Iran with fresh sanctions after Israel attack

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House last month. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The U.S. will impose new sanctions on Iran's missile and drone program after the country's unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced Tuesday evening.

Why it matters: President Biden is urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise military restraint. But in the economic sphere, the administration is demonstrating a willingness to retaliate against Iran.

🔸These new sanctions and other ones Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is preparing represent a subtle message to Israel that there is more than one way to harm the ruling regime in Tehran.

Driving the news: Sullivan said in a statement that Biden is working in coordination with international partners including G7 nations and bipartisan leaders in Congress on a comprehensive response to Iran's attack.

🔸U.S. defense agencies are working on strengthening air and missile defense and early warning systems across the Middle East.

🔸The new sanctions will also target entities supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran's Defense Ministry. "We anticipate that our allies and partners will soon be following with their own sanctions," Sullivan said.

🔸Meanwhile, Yellen vowed that the U.S. "will not hesitate" to inflict economic punishment in response to Iran's attack.

What's next: Yellen will press fellow finance ministers — visiting D.C. for the annual spring IMF meetings this week — to focus their governments on possible sanctions work with the U.S. on coordinated actions.

🔸"Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime's malign and destabilizing activity," Yellen is prepared to say Tuesday during her opening remarks at a press conference.

🔸"The attack by Iran and its proxies underscores the importance of Treasury's work to use our economic tools to counter Iran's malign activity," she will say, according to a copy of her remarks obtained by Axios.

🔸The G7 is also considering sanctions with the goal of isolating Iran internationally and increasing economic pressure on the regime, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday.

🔸"We now have a unified alliance of partners," he said. "That wasn't Iran's intent."

Flashback: Days after Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Biden administration announced new sanctions against Hamas leaders and financial facilitators.

Zoom out: Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not doing more to check the aggression of Iran and Iranian-backed forces throughout the Middle East.

🔸Biden's warning to Netanyahu to temper any possible Israeli counterattack against Iran was hit with a barrage of criticism Sunday, including from some Democrats.

🔸Last September, Republicans pilloried the president for releasing some $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue as part of a hostage swap deal.

🔸In January, after a pro-Iranian militia killed three U.S. service members in Jordan, some GOP lawmakers called for attacks on targets inside of Iran.

🔸Instead, Biden ordered strikes against Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria.

Zoom in: House Republicans have scheduled more than a dozen votes for this week on bills sanctioning Iran and its proxies in retaliation for last weekend's wide-ranging drone and missile attack on Israel.

Go deeper: Blinken: Escalation with Iran is not in U.S. or Israel's interests

Editor's note: This article has been updated with details of the White House national security adviser's announcement.

Updated 9 hours ago - World Blinken: Escalation with Iran is not in U.S. or Israel's interests

 

Blinken: Escalation with Iran is not in U.S. or Israel's interests

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a group of American Jewish leaders on Tuesday that further escalation with Iran is not in the interests of either the U.S. or Israel, three people who attended the meeting told Axios.

Why it matters: The Biden administration and several other Western countries allied with Israel are urging Benjamin Netanyahu's government not to rush into a retaliation against Iran that could lead to a regional war.

🔸The U.S. assessment is that Iran would respond to any significant, overt Israeli strike     on Iranian soil with a new round of missile and drone attacks, a senior U.S. official told     Axios.

🔸"We think it will be very hard to replicate the huge success we had on Saturday with defeating the attack if Iran launches hundreds of missiles and drones again — and the Israelis know it," another U.S. official said.

Behind the scenes: A person who attended the meeting said Blinken did not say that Israel should refrain from responding to Iran, stressing it was Israel's decision to make.

🔸"But his message was: be smart, strategic and limited as possible," the attendee said.

🔸"Strength and wisdom are two sides of the same coin," Blinken told the Jewish leaders.

🔸Blinken said that "we would never tell Israel what to do," and that the Biden administration was simply giving Israel the best advice it can, according to two people who attended the meeting.

The intrigue: Blinken told the group that the fact that Jordan and Saudi Arabia were part of the defensive effort to repel Iran's attack was very important and opens opportunities for the future, according to one attendee.

🔸Blinken also claimed that Hamas may have rejected the most recent hostage deal because it thought the Iranian attack might lead to a regional conflict, two attendees said.

🔸He added that if Hamas sees there is no regional war, the militant group will once again be under pressure to cut a hostage deal.

🔸The State Department declined to comment.

Zoom in: Blinken spoke on Monday with Benny Gantz, a minister in Israel's war cabinet, and conveyed a similar message regarding Israel's possible retaliation, two sources with knowledge of the call said.

🔸Gantz said on Tuesday that he's spoken to senior U.S. officials over the last 24 hours about the need for the international community to take action against Iran, including imposing more sanctions in order to stop its aggression.

🔸"Israel will work with its allies around the world to make it happen. A regional normalization process will serve this goal. Israel will act with strategic wisdom and respond in the time and place of its choosing," Gantz said at a policy conference.

🔸The call between Blinken and Gantz, which hasn't been disclosed publicly, is one of a series of calls between senior U.S. and Israeli officials in recent days focused on Israel's plans for retaliation.

🔸Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke on Monday with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant. It was their fourth call since the Iranian attack on Saturday.

The other side: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call Tuesday that Iran doesn't seek further escalation, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.

🔸"We will respond to any action against Iran's interests more fiercely, extensively and painfully than before," Raisi stressed, according to IRNA.

🔸The Kremlin said Putin "expressed hope that all sides would show reasonable restraint and prevent a new round of confrontation fraught with catastrophic consequences for the entire region."