WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers who are transferred from one job to another against their will to pursue job discrimination claims under federal civil rights law, even when they are not demoted or docked pay.

Workers only have to show that the transfer resulted in some, but not necessarily significant, harm to prove their claims, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The justices unanimously revived a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police sergeant after she was forcibly transferred, but retained her rank and pay.

Sgt. Jaytonya Muldrow had worked for nine years in a plainclothes position in the department’s intelligence division before a new commander reassigned her to a uniformed position in which she supervised patrol officers. The new commander wanted a male officer in the intelligence job and sometimes called Muldrow “Mrs.” instead of “sergeant,” Kagan wrote.

Muldrow sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Lower courts had dismissed Muldrow’s claim, concluding that she had not suffered a significant job disadvantage.

“Today, we disapprove that approach,” Kagan wrote. “Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test.”

Kagan noted that many cases will come out differently under the lower bar the Supreme Court adopted Wednesday. She pointed to cases in which people lost discrimination suits, including those of an engineer whose new job site was a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, a shipping worker reassigned to exclusively nighttime work and a school principal who was forced into a new administrative role that was not based in a school.

Although the outcome was unanimous, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas each wrote separate opinions noting some level of disagreement with the majority’s rationale in ruling for Muldrow.

The decision revives Muldrow’s lawsuit, which now returns to lower courts. Muldrow contends that, because of sex discrimination, she was moved to a less prestigious job, which was primarily administrative and often required weekend work, and she lost her take-home city car.

“If those allegations are proved,” Kagan wrote, “she was left worse off several times over.”

The case is Muldrow v. St.Louis, 22-193.

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators said Wednesday they’re seeking details from TikTok on a new app from the video sharing platform that pays users to watch videos.

The European Commission said it sent TikTok a “request for information” on the TikTok Lite app that has been quietly released in France and Spain.

The commission wants to know about the risk assessment that TikTok should have carried out before deploying the app in the European Union.

Such evaluations are required under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping law that took effect last year with the aim of cleaning up social media platforms. The commission is the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top enforcer of digital regulations.

TikTok Lite lets users “earn great rewards,” according to its app store listing. The app, which launched this month in France and Spain, is slimmed-down version of the main TikTok app and doesn’t come with ecommerce or livestreaming features. Rewards are restricted to users 18 years and older.

The commission said the app lets users earn points by doing things like watching videos, liking content and following content creators. The points can be exchanged for rewards including Amazon vouchers and gift cards on PayPal.

TikTok has 24 hours to turn over the risk assessment. The commission is interested in what it says about the app’s potential impact on the protection of minors, “as well as on the mental health of users, in particular in relation to the potential stimulation of addictive behaviour.”

It’s also seeking other information on the measures TikTok has put in place to mitigate such “systemic risks,” which the company has until April 26 to provide.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — 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 flights 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.” That’s before the discovery of crude oil in this energy-rich nation then part of a British protectorate known as the Trucial States.

One possible contributor may have been “cloud seeding,” in which small planes operated by the government fly 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. Flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE’s cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Monday.

The National, an English-language, state-linked newspaper in Abu Dhabi, quoted an anonymous official at the center on Wednesday as saying no cloud seeding took place on Tuesday, without acknowledging any earlier flights.

The center did not respond to questions Wednesday from the AP.

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

Scientists also say climate change in general is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. Dubai hosted the United Nations’ COP28 climate talks just last year. Rising temperatures and other effects of global warming long have been viewed as a threat to life in the already-baking region.

The rains began late Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with some 20 millimeters (0.79 inches) of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport. The storms intensified around 9 a.m. local Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city.

By the end of Tuesday, more than 142 millimeters (5.59 inches) of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 94.7 millimeters (3.73 inches) of rain 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.

One couple, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to speak freely 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 30 kilometers (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 duty-free clinking away.

Dubai International Airport acknowledged Wednesday morning that the flooding had left “limited transportation options” and affected flights as aircraft crews couldn’t reach the airfield.

“Recovery will take some time,” the airport said on the social platform X.

Emirates said the airline had halted check-in for passengers departing from Dubai itself from 8 a.m. until midnight Wednesday as it tried to clear the airport of transit passengers — many of whom had been sleeping where they could in its cavernous terminals.

Passengers on FlyDubai, Emirates’ low-cost sister airline, also faced disruptions.

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.”

Egypt’s national carrier, EgyptAir, also temporarily suspended flights between Cairo and Dubai due to the bad weather.

Schools across the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, largely shut ahead of the storm and government employees were largely working remotely if able. Many workers stayed home as well, though some ventured out, with the unfortunate stalling out their vehicles in deeper-than-expected water covering spots on some roads. That included parts of the Sheikh Zayed Road, a 12-lane highway through downtown Dubai.

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 slept in their flooded vehicles Tuesday night. In Ras al-Khaimah, the country’s northernmost emirate, police said one 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.

Khatm al-Shakla, an area near Al Ain in Abu Dhabi, saw 254 millimeters (10 inches) of rain Tuesday, the most anywhere in the country, officials said.

Authorities canceled school and the government instituted remote work again for Wednesday. Dubai later closed schools for the rest of the week.

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, which saw condolences come into the country from rulers across the region.

JERUSALEM (JNS) – “A farmer does not leave his land.”

Six months after losing his wife, his 15-year-old son and one of his legs in the Oct. 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, Avida Bachar is back on his land.

On Oct. 7, Bachar’s wife and son were killed in front of his eyes after terrorists overwhelmed them in their two-story home, which was utterly gutted. But despite the pain, he is determined to choose life.

“We underwent a tragedy. But you can’t change the past; only the future,” he told JNS on Tuesday. “This is not the closing of a circle. This is a continuation.”

On that nightmare morning, Bachar was at home with his wife, Dana, and their two teenage children, Carmel, 15, and Hadar, 14, when the sound of sirens and incoming rockets awakened them. Like all the residents of Gaza border communities, who have faced such attacks for over a decade and a half, they were expecting the military to show up and then announce an all-clear.

Instead, the sound of gunfire burst out and their community WhatsApp alerts warned of intruding terrorists. The family huddled in their safe room. Like most safe rooms, which are designed to protect against rockets and mortars, there was no lock on the door.

By late morning, terrorists burst into their home and tried to force their way into the safe room. Bachar and Carmel held the door shut from the inside, knowing that it was the only thing thing between them and certain death.

The terrorists riddled the door with bullets, hitting Carmel’s arms and piercing Bachar’s leg. The door handle was also hit, jamming the door shut. The terrorists then set the home on fire.

Talking to a medic by phone, the family tried to create a makeshift tourniquet to stop Carmel’s bleeding. The safe room began to fill with smoke. The family covered their faces with urine-soaked towels to help them breathe, he recalled.

As the family lay huddled on the floor, his son bleeding to death, his wife suddenly cried out “I can’t breathe” and lay deathly still.

Hadar, who was relentlessly phoning police and rescue officials, called medics and asked what to do. They were told to undress her and look for bullet wounds but could not find any. They later learned that a bullet fragment had pieced her ribs, causing her death.

Later in the afternoon, as he breathed his last breath, Carmel requested: “Bury me with my surfboard.”

Terrified, Hadar begged her father: “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

“You’re OK, but you have almost no blood left in your body,” a medic told Bachar. Ambulances rushed him to the emergency room. En route, he asked for some water. The medic gave him some, even though he was not supposed to drink before an operation.

“I didn’t think you would make it,” the medic would later tell him.

After his leg was amputated, Bachar underwent months of recovery in hospital.

Photos of his wife and son would pop up on his phone, reminding him of things lost. “But I realized it doesn’t matter what you believe in—God, or a tree or whatever—the greatest lesson of my life is seeing the half the glass of life that is full,” he related.

Bachar dreams of returning full-time to his farm.

“Of course we will return to Be’eri,” he said. He currently splits his time between the Dead Sea Hotel, where he is temporarily housed, and his farm in the community, which lost 10% of its 1,100 members in the attack.

His eldest son is already long back on the kibbutz, working in the print shop.

“I am coming home,” said Bachar. “I am coming back to my land.”

(JNS) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that he will host Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, during a speech to parliament in Ankara rife with anti-Israel tropes.

Erdogan praised the terrorist group, which on Oct. 7 carried out the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, as a “liberation movement.”

The Turkish leader boasted that his country stood behind Hamas when no one else did.

“When everyone was silent, we came out and defined Hamas as a resistance organization, not as a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said.

“From the U.N. podium, I declared and showed with maps that Israel had occupied the Palestinian lands. We have always stood with our Palestinian brothers, in every way,” he said, adding, “I will continue to make the voice of the Palestinian people heard.”

Erdogan accused Israel of being behind several Turkish coup attempts in recent decades.

“Don’t forget the military coup on September 12, 1980, which took place immediately after the huge demonstration for Jerusalem in the [Turkish] city of Konya. Don’t forget the military coup on February 28, 1997, which took place immediately after the Jerusalem Night event in Ankara [Province]. Don’t forget that the failed coup attempt in 2016 was carried out by Zionist servants,” he said.

“All these steps were taken to break our sensitivity to the Palestinian struggle. From here I declare: We will not bow our heads or give up in the face of your attacks, such as military coups, economic attacks, assassination attempts and psychological warfare,” Erdogan declared.

A film was screened highlighting Turkey’s actions on behalf of the Palestinians. The crowd chanted “Death to Israel” from the gallery.

In local elections on March 31, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered its worst defeat since it took power in 2003.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz attributed the historic defeat to the AK Party’s hostility to the Jewish state.

Although ties between Turkey and Israel had deteriorated in 2010, it appeared that the relationship would improve with Erdogan agreeing to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly annual meeting in New York in September 2023.

However, just a few weeks later, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 240 others. Erdogan backed Hamas.

Sacrificing economic interests
In April, Ankara announced export restrictions on Israel after Jerusalem denied a Turkish request to airdrop aid into the Gaza Strip.

Erdogan’s government said the trade measures would apply to 54 categories of products and would last until a ceasefire is declared.

Katz said Erdogan “is once again sacrificing the economic interests of the people of Turkey for his support of the Hamas murderers in Gaza who raped, murdered and desecrated the bodies of women, girls and adults, and burned children alive.

“Israel will not submit to violence and extortion, will not overlook the unilateral violation of our trade agreements and will take parallel measures against Turkey that will harm the Turkish economy,” he added.

Last month, Erdogan likened Netanyahu and his government to Nazi Germany.

“Netanyahu and his administration, with their crimes against humanity in Gaza, are writing their names next to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, like today’s Nazis,” he said.

The Israeli leader “continues to commit massacres against the Palestinian people,” he continued, adding that Turkey would do “what is necessary to hold Israeli officials accountable.”

Netanyahu blasted the Turkish leader over the remarks, saying, “Israel observes the laws of war and will not be subject to moral preaching from Erdogan, who supports [the] murderers and rapists of the Hamas terrorist organization, denies the Armenian Genocide, massacres Kurds in his own country and cracks down on regime opponents and journalists.”

In November, Erdogan told his country’s parliament that Israel would soon be destroyed.

JERUSALEM – Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin has been held in Hamas captivity since October 7, has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2024, TIME announced on Wednesday.

Read below Newsweek article

https://time.com/6965236/rachel-goldberg-polin/

BROOKLYN (JNS) – Shahana Hanif, a New York City Council member and co-chair of its Taskforce to Combat Hate, is ignoring antisemitism and leaving her Jewish constituents in Brooklyn’s 39th district feeling unsafe, per an op-ed in the New York Daily News.

When Hanif was elected in 2021, “progressives throughout the district were excited and optimistic. A Kensington-born daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, Hanif was the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council, with a promise and commitment to represent every resident of the district,” wrote Andres Spokoiny, Leonard Petlakh and Lisa Silverstein Nelson, each of whom runs a Jewish organization.

“Two-and-a-half years later, however, many of her Jewish constituents feel abandoned, betrayed and endangered,” the trio wrote.

Hanif, 33, was one of two council members to vote against a resolution to end Jew-hatred, offering a “weak excuse,” the three wrote. They noted that her first post on social media after Oct. 7 came days later, when she blamed Israel for being attacked.

“There is nowhere for the people of Gaza to go. The international community cannot stand by while the IDF indiscriminately attacks unarmed civilians and critical infrastructure. There must be a ceasefire to ensure that the already astronomical death toll does not rise,” Hanif wrote on Oct. 13.

“The root cause of this war is the illegal, immoral and unjust occupation of the Palestinian people. The occupation has brought violence toward Israelis and Palestinians for over 75 years. There will be no peace unless the rights of all people in this region are respected,” she wrote.

“We cannot be distracted in this call. The Palestinian people demand our solidarity, and we cannot let harmful rhetoric toward our Jewish neighbors, seen at the Times Square rally last week, obscure our calls for justice,” she added.

Hanif “has participated in demonstrations in which genocidal chants like ‘from the river to the sea’ were commonplace, not once disassociating herself from them,” the three heads of Jewish organizations wrote. “She hasn’t condemned the antisemitic graffiti or vandalization of property in her district, nor the ripping of hostage posters.”

“In a city in which antisemitic hate crimes increased 170% between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023, Hanif’s attitude is a blatant dereliction of duty,” they wrote. “To add to the harm, Hanif is given cover by fringe anti-Zionist Jewish groups, which do not represent the Jewish community, allowing her to ignore, if not condemn, the 95% of Jews who believe Israel has a right to exist.”

A group of 16 Jewish communal leaders from Hanif’s district met with her recently, but the council member’s “callous response” left the group “shocked, rattled and more afraid than before,” the trio wrote.

“During that meeting, the council member outright stated that she refused to condemn Hamas, she refused to say whether Israel had a right to exist and told us that she was generally fine with the anti-Israel graffiti,” they wrote.

“It is inconceivable that someone who refuses to condemn Hamas and denies Jews the right to decide what constitutes antisemitism, could be appointed co-chair of the council’s Task Force to Combat Hate,” they added. “It is time for people of goodwill in District 39, and across N.Y.C. to stand with their Jewish neighbors by demanding Hanif takes affirmative actions to protect her Jewish constituents, end her biased approach to constituent services and be removed as co-chair of the Task Force to Combat Hate.”

(JNS) – Drivers who find themselves stuck in front of “pro-Hamas mobs” blocking traffic should “take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote.

“It’s time to put an end to this nonsense,” he added.

In another post, he endorsed video footage of people forcefully dragging protesters out of a road. “How it should be done,” he wrote.

An opinion columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer with more than 85,000 followers on social media wrote that Cotton was “advocating the murder of dissenting Americans who are trying to end the slaughter of Palestinian children through civil disobedience.”

How it should be done:

pic.twitter.com/xrLT8RQ8Mk

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) April 16, 2024

Dumisani Washington, founder and CEO of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, also rejected Cotton’s post but did so without claiming it was a call for murder.

“You could use your position as a U.S. senator to help force/empower law enforcement to do their jobs and arrest the terrorist-supporting idiots blocking traffic and shutting down airports,” Washington wrote.

“Cops know they’ll get arrested for enforcing the law. The people know they’ll be arrested for ‘taking matters into their own hands,’” he added. “Hell, criminals are assaulting police officers (in blue cities/states) and nothing happens to them. Do better, senator.”

“Mr. Cotton ignited furor in 2020 with an opinion essay in The New York Times in which he called for the use of military force to put down riots across the country amid a rash of civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by the police in Minneapolis,” The New York Times reported.

In a special pre-Pesach interview , Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel and Rabbi of Tel Aviv, spoke to Arutz Sheva and stressed that the interception of the Iranian attack on Israel is not the only miracle, but also the fact that an international coalition stood by Israel.

“It is by God’s grace that all these countries joined us in responding to the Iranian attack,” says Rabbi Lau, “the USA, England, to a certain extent France, and even Jordan, which on the one hand is our enemy and on the other hand fought with us.”

Rabbi Lau says that it is obvious that there was a common interest in this coalition, but even so, the Hand of God is visible here. “I understand why. We all have a common enemy; the Iranian threat, but everything is from heaven and suddenly all of these countries have a common enemy with us, and we are no longer isolated, nor alone in the face of this great danger.”

According to Rabbi Lau, “Hashem did us a great favor that 99% of all the UAVs were destroyed without harming us. There was only some damage to places, and no harm to people. This whole story was a great miracle, but we have yet to appreciate its magnitude. We experienced G-d’s true protection and this connection with the superpowers and our neighbors, as well as other details that are confidential, all I can say is that this was a great divine miracle.”

Leading Religious-Zionist rabbis have called on all communities in Israel to add a special prayer of thanksgiving in Shuls, reciting the Hallel Hagadol (Tehillim 136) in Shul.

The rabbis wrote that “This is the day which Hashem has made, let us rejoice therein. After the night of missiles and drones, we will all thank Hashem for the miracles he wrought for us in taking us out of Egypt and for those He performed this year. We call on all shuls to say on Shabbos day, Psalm 136- Hodo La’Hashem. Everyone should say it when the ark is open and thus we will be grateful to Hashem for all the good and kindness He has bestowed upon us.”

(AP) – The United Nations Security Council’s committee on new members reported on Tuesday that it could not reach a consensus on the revived application for full Palestinian U.N. membership.

Algeria, the Arab world’s de facto representative on the council, has drafted its own resolution and plans to put the application up for a decisive vote on Thursday afternoon. Washington has suggested that it would veto such an application.

The Committee on the Admission of New Members—which includes representatives of all the members of the Security Council—met twice last week to discuss the Palestinian application, which was first filed in 2011.

This month, as more than a dozen years ago, the committee did not reach a consensus. Per longstanding U.N. practice, the committee would not recommend a vote of the full Security Council without its own consensus on the matter.

The committee’s report did not reveal or detail the views or vote of specific countries, instead providing a broad outline of last week’s discussions.

One nation or several countries said during the meeting that full membership for Palestinians—who have had non-state observer status since the U.N. General Assembly granted it in 2012—“would be an important step toward a two-state solution” and put the Palestinians on a “sovereign equality basis with Israel,” per the report.

Some 140 U.N. member states have recognized Palestinian statehood.

Another view articulated during the meetings was that the Palestinians may not meet all of the requirements for membership “in light of the situation on the ground,” per the report.

This appeared to refer to the lack of control of the Palestinian Authority, which the United Nations recognizes as the legal governing Palestinian entity, over the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas terror group rules. Palestinians also haven’t defined borders to their proposed state.

At least one state said during the meeting that the Palestinian application is “premature” and that a “negotiated solution remained the only viable option for a long-term sustainable peace,” according to the report.

It was not stated explicitly in the report, but Washington has lodged objections based on 2011 congressional legislation, which prohibits the U.S. government from funding the United Nations or any of its agencies and organizations if any U.N. body accepts the Palestinians as a full member.

Washington contributes up to 25% of the annual U.N. budget.

On Tuesday evening, Algeria decided to move on its own, drafting a resolution to grant the Palestinians full membership despite the lack of committee consensus.

U.S. diplomats and officials have signaled, without saying it outright, that Washington would issue a veto in Thursday afternoon’s Security Council vote.

The Algerian resolution is expected to garner solid support from 10 or 11 of the 15 members of the council. American allies Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom are question marks. The resolution would need nine votes to pass, with none of the council’s five permanent members vetoing.

The Arab group of 22 countries issued a statement Tuesday evening calling for all members of the Security Council to vote for Algeria’s resolution.

“At the very least, we implore council members not to obstruct this critical initiative,” it stated, calling full Palestinian U.N. membership “a long overdue step that should have been taken not just in 2011, but since 1948.”

Palestinian Arabs turned down statehood in 1948, instead favoring an attempted Arab war of annihilation against the nascent state of Israel.

Thursday’s vote will come just hours after a ministerial-level Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file. The session, which will draw foreign ministers and other high-ranking diplomats, will come with added media attention, which is why it appears Algeria is trying to force Washington to reveal in such a setting whether it will veto.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is expected to attend, just days after Tehran’s missile and drone attack on Israel. Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Ayman Safadi, the foreign ministers for Saudi Arabia and Jordan, will also be in New York.

Both Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped defend Israel from Iran’s onslaught last weekend, shooting down Iranian projectiles and possibly relaying intelligence.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has given no indication that its top diplomat, Israel Katz, will fly to New York for the meeting.

Notably, neither U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken nor U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield will attend, as both are overseas. Robert Wood, deputy U.S. envoy to the United Nations, will represent Washington.

JERUSALEM (AP) — British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Wednesday that Israel “is making a decision to act” in response to Iran’s missile and drone attack over the weekend, while Iran warned that even the “tiniest” invasion of its territory would bring a “massive and harsh” response.

Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s unprecedented attack without saying when or how, leaving the region bracing for further escalation after months of unrest linked to the ongoing war in Gaza. Israel’s closest allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom — which helped it repel the Iranian attack — are trying to limit any further escalation.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi meanwhile warned Israel against any retaliation as he addressed an annual army parade, which had been relocated to a barracks from its usual route and was not carried live on state TV — possibly because of fears that it could be targeted.

In remarks carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Raisi said Saturday’s attack was a limited one, and that if Iran had wanted to carry out a bigger attack, “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime.”

Adding to the already high tensions, a rocket attack by Lebanon’s Hezbollah wounded six people in an Israeli border town on Wednesday. The Iran-backed militant group said it was a response to the killing of a number of its fighters, including a commander, in Israeli strikes on Lebanon the day before.

Both Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock were in Israel on separate visits to meet with top officials on Wednesday. The two European countries, which are among Israel’s closest allies, have urged restraint.

Cameron said “it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act” against Iran, but he hoped they would do so “in a way that is smart as well as tough and also does as little as possible to escalate this conflict.” He spoke after meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, whose office is mainly ceremonial.

Cameron said the main aim of his visit was to refocus attention on the ongoing war in Gaza and the need for a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Baerbock meanwhile called on all sides to prevent the conflict from spreading.

“I will assure our Israeli partners of Germany’s full solidarity,” she said Tuesday. “And we will discuss how a further escalation with more and more violence can be prevented. Because what matters now is to put a stop to Iran without encouraging further escalation.”

The ministers said they would push for further international sanctions on Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he met with both ministers and thanked them for their countries’ support.

“They have all sorts of suggestions and advice. I appreciate that. But I want to be clear: Our decisions we will make ourselves, and the state of Israel will do whatever it needs to defend itself,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel over the weekend in response to an apparent Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals.

Israel, with help from the United States, the United Kingdom, neighboring Jordan and other nations, says it successfully intercepted nearly all the missiles and drones. A seven-year-old girl was wounded in the attack, which did not cause any deaths or major damage.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv on Wednesday, hitting an eight-floor apartment building and killing at least 14 people, authorities said.

At least 61 people, including two children, were wounded in the morning attack, Ukrainian emergency services said. Chernihiv lies about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of the capital, Kyiv, near the border with Russia and Belarus, and has a population of around 250,000 people.

The latest Russian bombardment came as the war stretched into its third year and approached what could be a critical juncture as a lack of further military support from Ukraine’s Western partners increasingly leaves it at the mercy of the Kremlin’s bigger forces.

Through the winter months, Russia made no dramatic advance along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, focusing instead on attritional warfare. However, Ukraine’s shortage of artillery ammunition, troops and armored vehicles has allowed the Russians to gradually push forward, military analysts say.

A crucial element for Ukraine is the holdup in Washington of approval for an aid package that includes roughly $60 billion for Ukraine. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that he would try to move the package forward this week.

Ukraine’s need is now acute, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

“The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine,” the ISW said in an assessment late Tuesday.

“Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of U.S. assistance, particularly air defense and artillery that only the U.S. can provide rapidly and at scale,” it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western countries to provide his country with more air defense equipment, including more surface-to-air Patriot guided missile systems. He said the Chernihiv strike “would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror was also sufficient.”

Zelenskyy told PBS in an interview broadcast earlier this week that Ukraine recently ran out of air defense missiles while it was defending against a major missile and drone attack that destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants, part of a recent Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba repeated Zelenskyy’s appeal for more help as he prepared to attend a Group of Seven foreign ministers’ meeting in Italy.

“We need at least seven more Patriot batteries to protect our cities and economic centers from destruction,” Kuleba told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview published Wednesday. “Why is it so difficult to find seven Patriot batteries?”

Ukrainian forces are digging in, building fortifications in anticipation of a major Russian offensive that Kyiv officials say could come as early as next month.

Ukraine is using long-range drone and missile strikes behind Russian lines which are designed to disrupt Moscow’s war machine.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone was shot down over the Tatarstan region early Wednesday. That’s the same area that was targeted in early April by Ukraine’s deepest strike so far inside Russia, about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) east of Ukraine.

Ukrainian drone developers have been extending the weapons’ range.

Another Ukrainian drone was shot down over the Mordovia region, roughly 350 kilometers (220 miles) east of Moscow, the ministry said. That is 700 kilometers (430 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

About an hour before that Mordovia attack, Russia’s civil aviation authority halted flights at airports in two of the country’s largest cities, Nizhny Novgorod and Tatarstan’s Kazan, because of safety concerns.

Also, unconfirmed reports said a Ukrainian missile struck an airfield in occupied Crimea. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian officials confirmed the strike, but local authorities temporarily closed a road where the airfield is located. Russian news agency Tass quoted the local mayor as saying windows in a mosque and a private house in the region were shattered in a blast there.

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the U.K. fell to its lowest level in two and a half years in March after a further easing in food prices, official figures showed Wednesday, a development which could further pave the way for a welcome cut in interest rates soon.

Consumer prices rose by 3.2% in the year to March, down from 3.4% in February, the Office for National Statistics said. That’s the lowest level since September 2021.

The fall in the annual rate was not as big as anticipated. Economists had predicted a reading of 3.1% for the month.

Inflation is still running higher than the Bank of England’s target of 2% but the direction of the move appears clear. Inflation hit a high above 11% at the end of 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to sharp increases in energy costs.

The fall means the U.K.’s inflation rate is lower than the U.S.’s for the first time in two years. In March, inflation in the U.S. rose to 3.5%.

Inflation is set to fall further in April, possibly to below 2%, as a result of sharply lower domestic energy bills, which economists think could prompt rate-setters at the Bank of England to consider a cut in interest rates in the next few months from the current 16-year high of 5.25%. However, a number of the nine policymakers have warned that the fight against inflation isn’t over yet as they expect prices to start rising again in the second half of the year.

“With a further significant drop due next month, inflation should soon return to target and the pressure to cut interest rates will grow,” said Simon Pittaway, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank.

The Bank of England, like the U.S. Fed and other central banks around the world, raised interest rates aggressively in late 2021 from near zero to counter price rises first stoked by supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic and then by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Higher interest rates — which cool the economy by making it more expensive to borrow, thereby bearing down on spending — have contributed to bringing down inflation worldwide.

Britain’s governing Conservative Party hopes that lower inflation and falling interest rates may trigger a feelgood factor ahead of a general election that has to take place by January 2025. Opinion polls show the main opposition Labour Party way ahead and headed for a big victory over the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010.