Summary

US President Donald Trump yesterday expressed frustration with allies who have been unwilling to do more to support the US war effort, telling them to “go get your own oil” as the conflict with Iran and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent average US gas prices soaring and roiled global markets. The president’s social media tirade came after US strikes hit a city that is home to one of Iran’s main nuclear sites, sending a massive fireball into the sky, and Tehran attacked a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The attacks showed the intensity of the war more than a month after the US and Israel launched their first strikes. The conflict has left more than 3,000 dead, and caused major disruptions to the world’s supply of oil and natural gas. Photo: AP Trump, who has vacillated between insisting there is progress in diplomatic talks with Iran and threatening to widen the war, had earlier shared footage of the attack on Isfahan. The central city is home to one of three nuclear enrichment sites attacked by the US in a 12-day war in June last year, and analysts believe much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is likely stored there. Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway leading out of Persian Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is transported during peacetime, has driven up global oil prices, as have Tehran’s attacks on regional energy infrastructure. That has shaken stock markets around the world and pushed up the cost of many basic goods. Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, hovered at about US$106 a barrel yesterday, up more than 45 percent since the war started on Feb. 28. Trump warned this week that if a ceasefire is not reached “shortly,” and if the strait is not reopened, the US would broaden its offensive, including by attacking the Kharg Island oil export hub and possibly desalination plants. Israel and the US launched a wave of strikes on Iran, hitting Tehran early yesterday morning. Israel also said it had launched a new wave of strikes targeting what it described as Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut. The video shared by Trump appeared to show a massive attack on Isfahan, and NASA satellites suggest explosions happened in a mountainous region on the city’s southern edge. Iran has not confirmed the attack. An Iranian drone hit a Kuwaiti oil tanker in waters off the United Arab Emirates, sparking a blaze that was later put out, the Dubai Media Office said. Authorities said no oil spill resulted. Four people were also wounded when debris from an intercepted drone fell into a residential area, and loud explosions could be heard later from another attack on Dubai. Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, while Saudi Arabia said it intercepted three ballistic missiles launched toward its capital. Loud explosions were also heard in Israel not long after the military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran. The UN Security Council planned to convene an emergency session yesterday after officials said three peacekeepers in southern Lebanon had been killed in less than 24 hours during Israel’s invasion. The UN peacekeeping mission in the country, where Israel is battling Iran-backed Hezbollah, did not say who was responsible for the deaths. The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J. China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head