Assessment: The U.S. can determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran’s arsenal of missiles and drones, five sources said. Iran-linked hackers said they got access to FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox. Trump faces a stark choice: cut a deal and get out of Iran or risk a lengthy conflict that could consume his presidency. Yemen’s Houthis launched their first missiles at Israel since the war began.
Warnings and fears: Trump’s pause in the fighting followed warnings from Gulf states that the war was growing far more dangerous and fears that the U.S. misjudged Tehran’s readiness to escalate. History lesson: The West’s attempt to protect Red Sea shipping from Houthi attacks along Yemen’s coast was a failure. Doing the same thing in the Strait of Hormuz will be harder.
Slick going: An equity selloff deepened and Brent crude futures settled at more than $112 a barrel. Options traders bet that the price will hit at least $150 by the end of April. As one analyst said, “Words alone aren’t cutting it right now.” Gas supplies face a longer recovery than oil does because there are fewer ways to reroute it and less capacity to store it, columnist Gavin Maguire says.
Support: Ukraine is in talks to help several countries to fend off Iranian drone strikes. It signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. India may risk violating Western sanctions by buying crude directly from Russia even as New Delhi’s diplomats try to end punitive U.S. tariffs on India’s exports.
Maneuvers: Ukraine is making long-range strikes on energy infrastructure to maintain pressure on Russia despite the U.S. easing sanctions on its oil, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The Kremlin denied reports that Vladimir Putin asked some businessmen to donate money to stabilize Russia’s finances during the Ukraine war. Russian lawmakers will visit their U.S. counterparts in the first such trip since the war began.
‘A privacy-lover’s dream’: Behind the cash purchase of the $1.1 million “Tucked Away” estate – Ghislaine Maxwell’s final home before her arrest – were funds sent by UBS on her behalf a month earlier. The Swiss bank processed the transfer three months after U.S. criminal investigators issued it a grand jury subpoena related to Maxwell’s financial dealings and its probe into international sex trafficking of children.
And in France: Investigators searched the Paris offices of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild as part of an inquiry into alleged corruption involving a French diplomat linked to Jeffrey Epstein. Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused it of facilitating their sexual abuse by Epstein.
Project canceled: OpenAI canceled Sora 30 minutes after its teams met Walt Disney Co. staffers on a project linked to the artificial-intelligence video tool. That marks the end of a deal between the two companies in which Disney planned to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and lend many of its characters for use in short AI videos.
You’re invited after all: A top AI conference said it would ban papers from researchers at any entity under U.S. sanctions, prompting outrage in China. The NeurIPS conference then reversed its policy change, saying they had issued it in error.
Before I forget…
Congress failed to overcome the funding standoff that has snarled airports and frozen paychecks for tens of thousands of federal workers. Trump said he would ensure that airport security screeners get paid.
German prosecutorscharged 66-year-old Daniela Klette, one of the last surviving alleged militants of the Red Army Faction, with attempted murder, bomb attacks, kidnapping for ransom and aggravated robbery.
