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In the last five years, the scope of Israel's defense exports has doubled, and the record of exports has been broken each year in the last three years, according to the report

Israel's defense exports in 2023 set an all-time record, amounting to over 13 billion dollars, according to an annual report by the Defense Exports Department of the Defense Ministry.

The report shows that 36 percent of all defense export deals in 2023 were related to air defense systems. This is compared to the 19 percent the year before. Other significant exports were radar and electronic warfare systems (11 percent), fire and launch equipment (11 percent), drones and avionics (9 percent) and ammunition and armaments (8 percent).

In the last five years, the scope of Israel's defense exports has doubled, and the record of exports has been broken each year in the last three years, according to the report. In 2023, almost half of defense exports (48 percent) were destined for countries in Asia and the Pacific. 35 percent were for Europe, 9 percent for North America, 4 percent for Latin America, 3 percent for the countries that are part of the Abraham Accords and 1 percent for countries in Africa.

The Defense Ministry said defense exports had become a central priority as part of an effort to strengthen security-strategic relations worldwide, enter new markets, remove bureaucratic barriers and reduce regulation.

"While our industries are primarily focused on providing the defense establishment with the capabilities to support our troops and defend our citizens ... they are also continuing to pursue areas of cooperation and exports to international partners," said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Fund says governments should do more to protect their economies in face of massive potential labour disruptions

The IMF said it had “profound concerns” about massive labour disruptions and rising inequality as societies move towards generative AI, and it urged governments to do more to protect their economies.

In a report published on Monday, the fund said countries should take action such as improving unemployment insurance, warning that, unlike past disruptive technologies, AI could lead to job losses in higher-skilled occupations.

While the IMF said that generative AI held immense potential to boost productivity growth and advance the delivery of public services, it cautioned that it also “raises profound concerns about massive labour disruptions and rising inequality”.

Generative AI, the ability of computers to automatically generate text or images using generative models, came to widespread attention with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late in 2022. While many companies have been slow to adopt it so far, it has prompted a rebound in global tech stocks.

Regulating AI has become a concern. The EU has agreed a first-of-its-kind AI Act that targets the risks posed by the fast-moving technology, with a possible outright ban on AI applications that carry unacceptable risks for the safety, livelihoods and rights of EU citizens.

In its report, the IMF said that policies on education and training needed to adapt to new realities to help prepare workers for a rapidly changing job market in the future, with a greater focus on offering life-long learning. Sector-based training, apprenticeships and reskilling programmes could play a greater role in helping workers with the transition to new tasks and sectors, it said.

“We want people to be able to benefit more broadly from the potential that this technology holds and we want to ensure that there are opportunities created for people,” said Era Dabla-Norris, deputy director at the IMF’s fiscal affairs department and co-author of the report.

She added that the “transition could be painful for workers” facing the prospect of higher and longer unemployment because “older workers may not have the skills that are needed in the age of AI and it may require more time than in the past to acquire these new skills”.

“You want to be able to cushion this costly transition and maintain social cohesion in societies,” she said.

The IMF advised against special taxes on AI, which have been suggested as a revenue-raising solution to cover the negative effects of AI, arguing they could hamper productivity growth.

Instead, the IMF proposed hiking taxes on capital gains and profits, levies that have declined in recent decades, as well as corporate income taxes, to help offset rising wealth inequality.

Earlier automation waves, such as the adoption of robotics, displaced mostly blue-collar and lower-skilled workers, while higher-skilled and white-collar workers are seen as most exposed to AI.

However, AI is also capable of powering more intelligent robots and could lead to further automation of blue-collar jobs, too, the IMF warned. This could exacerbate income and wealth inequality.

Generative AI could also result in a further rise in the market power and economic rents enjoyed by dominant firms “in increasingly concentrated and winner-take-all markets” as a result of capital getting more concentrated in the hands of fewer companies.

In January, the IMF estimated that AI would affect almost 40 per cent of jobs around the world, replacing some and complementing others. That echoed a report from Goldman Sachs in 2023, which estimated AI could replace the equivalent of 300mn full-time jobs while creating others and boosting productivity.

The IMF said that given uncertainty over the future of AI, governments should take an “agile” approach that prepares them for “highly disruptive scenarios”.

Because of the global reach of AI, said Dabla-Norris, “it’ll be really important more than ever for countries to work together”.

To the outside world, they were a physician, a journalist. No one suspected their apartment had become a prison.

The 73-year-old general practitioner Ahmad Al-Jamal was a fixture of his community.

He worked mornings at a public clinic in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Nuseirat and afternoons at his own small private clinic, where residents turned to him for procedures such as circumcisions. He also was an imam at a local mosque, where he was known for his beautiful voice when reciting the Quran.

But for the past several months, when he finished his duties each day, he would return home to the apartment he shared with his son, his daughter-in-law and their children—and the three Israeli hostages they were hiding there for Hamas.

It was common knowledge in Nuseirat that the Al-Jamal family was close to Hamas, according to local residents who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. But they said few people in the densely populated area in central Gaza knew of the secret locked in the small, darkened room in the family’s apartment.

The hostages and Israeli security forces have said their captors included Al-Jamal’s son, 37-year-old Palestinian journalist Abdullah Al-Jamal. From their locked and guarded room, the hostages said, they could hear Abdullah and his wife, Fatma, a phlebotomist at a local clinic, and their children going about their daily lives in the apartment.

The building on Bisan Street is no longer standing. An Israeli airstrike destroyed it earlier this month, soon after Israeli commandos burst into the apartment and extracted the hostages, according to local residents. Abdullah and his father were killed in the operation along with Abdullah’s wife, according to the local residents, who confirmed the sequence of events.

The Al-Jamals’ children survived the raid, according to a next-door neighbor.

A few blocks away from the Al-Jamal home, another family with Hamas links called Abu Nar was holding Noa Argamani, according to local residents and an Israeli official. Argamani’s kidnapping at the Nova festival was recorded on video, making her one of the best-known of the roughly 250 hostages taken Oct. 7.

The Abu Nar family was also killed, and their building destroyed, local residents said. They were less prominent in the neighborhood than the Al-Jamals, residents said.

Surviving members of the Al-Jamal family declined to comment or weren’t reachable.

Israeli’s military operation in Nuseirat on June 8 rescued the four hostages but also left a large number of Palestinians dead following heavy fighting.

The Israeli military said the special forces who carried out the rescue eliminated armed Hamas militants guarding the hostages but declined to comment on whether they killed the family members they encountered in both buildings. The military didn’t reply to a request for comment on whether it destroyed the buildings.

The rubble where the Al-Jamal family once lived has drawn a steady flow of gawkers eager to see the place where hostages had been imprisoned in their midst, some of the people said.

The June 8 rescue operation was accompanied by heavy airstrikes and turned into a fierce battle with Hamas in the streets, leaving behind death and destruction. In the days since, local residents have discussed the folly of Hamas keeping Israeli hostages above ground in a residential area near a bustling market.

Some people said they were surprised by the revelation, because it is hard to keep a secret in the densely built neighborhood. Even a cough can be heard through the walls of the concrete and cinder-block apartment buildings, they said.

Others were furious that Hamas had put civilians in danger. Any Israeli military action in the narrow streets of Nuseirat was bound to result in large numbers of dead and wounded, some residents said.

Some locals said Hamas should have held the hostages in tunnels. Others said they should have been returned to Israel as part of a deal to end the war. The failure to secure a cease-fire despite months of negotiations is causing growing frustration in Gaza, people across the war-torn enclave say.

“Hamas should give us a map of the safe zones we can stay in, because if we knew there were hostages in the neighborhood, we would have looked for another place,” said Mustafa Muhammad, 36, who fled from Gaza City to Nuseirat early in the war with his wife and infant daughter.

When the raid got under way, Muhammad and his family found themselves trapped with nowhere safe to go.

Many hostages have been held in tunnels, but a number have been held in apartments, potentially reflecting the challenge of moving around so many captives in an active war zone.

Local residents said Ahmad and Abdullah Al-Jamal were part of an extended family that had a number of ties to Hamas. Mosques throughout Gaza are controlled by Hamas, and imams serve with the approval of the militant group. Ahmad’s brother Abdelrahman Al-Jamal is a Hamas lawmaker in Gaza’s legislative council.

Abdullah was a freelance contributor to the Palestine Chronicle, a pro-Palestinian news website based in the U.S. He also worked for the Hamas-run news agency Palestine Now, according to Gaza’s government media office, which noted his death, and had served as a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Labor.

He made no secret of his support for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians. Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza has killed over 37,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose numbers don’t say how many were militants.

“Praise be to God…Oh God, guide us…Oh God, guide us…Oh God, guide us…Oh God, grant us the victory you promised,” Abdullah posted on Facebook on Oct. 7.

The Palestine Chronicle said it was saddened by his death and denied he was involved in holding the Israeli hostages.

The family was well-regarded and popular in Nuseirat, a refugee camp established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that has grown into a dense urban area. Palestinian refugee camps, especially in the West Bank, remain focal points of a militant struggle against Israel.

The Al-Jamals originally came from the majority Arab town of Al-Ramla, now Ramla in central Israel, and fled to Gaza in 1948.

Ahmad, the head of the family, was busy throughout the war, coming and going from his clinic and the mosque or buying groceries as normal, a neighbor said. His son Abdullah was rarely seen, the neighbor said.

“Dr. Ahmad was the one who circumcised my three boys,” said Ali Bkhit, a social-media consultant who was born and raised in the neighborhood. “When I dealt with him, he was a nice character; his smile never left his face.”

Bkhit said he grew up hearing Ahmad Al-Jamal’s voice reciting the Quran at the local Al-Farouk Mosque. “He was always there, his voice was beautiful, and people admired him a lot,” he said.

Bkhit said he was shocked to learn that the Al-Jamals had been holding hostages in their home, because he didn’t expect the family to be involved in such a way in Hamas’s war with Israel.

Israeli intelligence caught wind of the hostages’ location in May, according to Israel’s military. Special forces spent weeks practicing for the rescue mission on models of the two small apartment blocks, the military said.

The hostages’ return home caused jubilation in Israel. It was a rare day of joy amid a grim war that is still far from achieving its declared goals of destroying Hamas and bringing home the 116 remaining Israelis and others seized on Oct. 7.

The Nuseirat area, swollen with civilians displaced from other parts of Gaza, suffered the heaviest bombardment by Israeli air and ground forces that it has seen in the eight-month war.

Palestinian health authorities said 274 people were killed and nearly 700 injured. Israel’s military said around 100 people were killed or wounded, including militants and civilians caught in the crossfire. The numbers couldn’t be independently verified.

Rescue team leader Arnon Zamora was wounded in a firefight at the Al-Jamal house and later died.

A video released by Israel’s military showed commandos entering a room in the apartment and finding the three male hostages. In the second building, about 200 yards away, Israeli commandos found Noa Argamani.

Abdullah Al-Jamal’s recent articles for the Palestine Chronicle reported on civilian deaths in the invasion of Gaza, accusing Israel of massacres and genocide.

One article published on June 3, just a few days before he died, talked about Gaza families that had taken in people displaced by the war. It carried the headline, “My House Will Always Be Open.”

Color Health has developed an AI assistant using OpenAI’s GPT-4o model to help doctors screen and treat cancer patients

OpenAI is working with startup Color Health to expand the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare by applying its AI models to cancer screening and treatment.

Color Health, which was founded as a genetic testing company in 2013, has developed an AI assistant or “copilot” using OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. The copilot helps doctors create cancer screening plans, as well as pretreatment plans for people who have been diagnosed with cancer.

The copilot is intended to assist doctors, not replace them, said Othman Laraki, co-founder and chief executive of the startup. “We call it a copilot because it’s very similar to the engineering copilot mindset and model. It’s not like copilots replaced [software] engineers,” he said.

OpenAI and Color Health began work last year on the copilot announced Monday.

It is OpenAI’s latest foray into healthcare. The San Francisco-based AI lab announced in April a deal with Moderna where the biotech company uses AI to speed up business processes and tasks like selecting optimal doses for clinical trials. Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

“We see a perfect fit for AI technology, for language models, because they can really help on every one of those dimensions,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer. “They can bring in relevant information to the surface faster. They can give clinicians more tools to understand medical records, to understand data, to understand labs and diagnostics.”

Color’s copilot uses OpenAI APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are how developers access the OpenAI models to use in their applications. The startup, like most developers, pays OpenAI based on usage of tokens, or word segments, that are sent to its models and back, Laraki said.

By ingesting patient data such as personal risk factors and family history, and using them alongside clinical guidelines, the copilot creates a virtual, personalized cancer screening plan that tells doctors the diagnostic tests a patient is missing.

“Primary care doctors don’t tend to either have the time, or sometimes even the expertise, to risk-adjust people’s screening guidelines,” Laraki said.

The copilot also assists with putting a cancer pretreatment “work-up” together, after a doctor has made a diagnosis. The work-up can consist of specialized imaging and lab tests, plus prior authorization from health insurance to order the tests, all of which can take weeks, or months, before a patient sees an oncologist. Studies show a month’s delay can increase mortality by 6% to 13%, Laraki said.

The idea of applying AI at this stage of cancer treatment is to help oncologists work “at the top of their license” by eliminating some administrative work that leads to burnout, said Karen Knudsen, chief executive of the American Cancer Society. The nonprofit partners with Color on a separate cancer care program for employers and labor unions, and Laraki is a former member of the cancer society’s board.

“If this is going to help solve for gathering all the needed information for pre-auth, that will be a win for everyone, not just the patients, but also the clinical teams,” Knudsen said.

Still, the pretreatment work-up process is complex—and therefore not meant for full takeover by AI. There are countless decision factors for various cancers, Laraki said, which is why doctors remain in full control of final outputs and decisions.

Color said that in a trial of the copilot clinicians were able to analyze patient records in an average of five minutes.

Alan Ashworth, president of the University of California San Francisco’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the facility is testing the use of Color’s copilot for diagnostic work-ups as if it were a new drug. That involves comparing a retrospective analysis against a prospective trial, he said, while re-evaluating as the algorithm behind it changes.

Reducing the time to treatment by weeks would be considered a win, Ashworth said.

The most promising use of AI in healthcare right now is automating “mundane” tasks like paperwork and physician note-taking, he said. The tendency for AI models to “hallucinate” and contain bias presents serious risks for using AI to replace doctors. Both Color’s Laraki and OpenAI’s Lightcap are adamant that doctors be involved in any clinical decisions.

In the future, AI’s ability to ingest and analyze vast amounts of clinical and real-world data can help doctors more quickly find clues for even asymptomatic cancer, Ashworth and Knudsen said. But right now, the technology isn’t there.

OpenAI formed a safety and security committee in May after the company became embroiled in a legal battle over a new voice assistant in its GPT-4o model. However, customer work, including with Color Health, falls under standard board oversight, a spokesman said.

OpenAI recently struck other deals aimed at expanding its presence in a variety of businesses, well beyond its partnership with Microsoft, including a pact with Apple to power some of its new AI functions; an arrangement where PricewaterhouseCoopers resells its enterprise ChatGPT product; and licensing deals with Reddit and Axel Springer.

Lightcap said OpenAI isn’t interested in just one market. “This is a technology that’s going to be everywhere. That’s kind of our mark for success,” he said.

The company’s turnaround plan found an influential ally in the pop superstar who has been wearing the firm’s custom couture during her record-shattering Eras Tour

Italian luxury-fashion label Roberto Cavalli SpA is shunning quiet luxury and China, two of the industry’s most powerful engines, in its attempt to make a comeback—with a little help from Taylor Swift.

The brand, known for its animal-print designs and extreme aesthetic, was acquired in 2019 by Dubai-based conglomerate DAMAC Group. After years of financial struggles that led the company to file for bankruptcy protection and forced it to retreat, Roberto Cavalli is looking to expand again.

The company’s turnaround plan found an influential ally in pop superstar Taylor Swift, who has been wearing custom couture looks designed by Roberto Cavalli creative chief Fausto Puglisi during the singer’s record-shattering Eras Tour.

“That is also part of the renaissance of the brand,” Roberto Cavalli Chief Executive Sergio Azzolari said in an interview. “One of the fears was that, after all these turmoils, the brand would have been kind of diluted, which it was at the initial stages.”

Last year, Swift donned a glittery long-sleeved navy crop top and skirt by Roberto Cavalli on the red carpet of the Grammy Awards.

The company needs to respect its past and its identity, but rethink the customer base and update the market strategy, the CEO said.

Recent results from luxury groups showed a gap between the companies that cater to the most affluent consumers and those that are more exposed to a younger, less-wealthy clientele. Amid a sector-wide slowdown, sales at companies such as LVMH—which owns the Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany brands—and Hermes International have held up better than rivals like Gucci owner Kering.

Analysts say wealthy shoppers have embraced so-called quiet luxury, the trend of less showy, but steeply priced clothing. However, Azzolari said the company is turning even bolder in its atelier line, continuing to bet on animal print and splashy designs as the brand’s signature.

“This authenticity is what new generations are looking for,” Roberto Cavalli’s CEO said. The company is revamping its Just Cavalli line, which targets a Gen-Z clientele, while the Roberto Cavalli brand focuses on wealthier consumers.

“We are staying true to the brand,” Azzolari said.

While Roberto Cavalli has gone from being on thin ice to planning for growth and expansion, its ambitions could encounter hurdles. “It is safe to say that the Roberto Cavalli brand has continued to be less and less relevant over the past 20 years,” Bernstein analyst Luca Solca said.

Despite a spike in interest in Roberto Cavalli in April, around the time of the death of the company’s namesake founder, the brand’s popularity—as measured by Google searches—trended downward over the last 15 years with some ups and downs along the way, according to Google Trends. Google Trends tracks relative popularity of search terms by comparing to other searches.

Roberto Cavalli aims to reach break even this year and Azzolari said the company is on track to meet its targets. In 2023, it booked revenue of 120 million euros ($128.5 million), while it expects to reach EUR500 million in 2026. The company doesn’t disclose profitability figures.

“We are at a point in time where we have to pick our battles,” Azzolari said.

The company is focused on expanding in North America as well as in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. It has opened new stores in Las Vegas and Ibiza and plans to expand in Dubai by the end of the year. Unlike other luxury names, Roberto Cavalli lacks a strong presence in China, one of the biggest luxury markets, and its CEO doesn’t plan to change that.

“Cavalli was never really a household name in China,” Azzolari said. The company would need a lot of time and effort to approach Chinese consumers with a localized and tailored offer, he added. It currently sells its products in the country through wholesale channels.

By contrast, Roberto Cavalli’s CEO sees potential in India. “It is a very interesting market, but no one has cracked the code yet,” he said.

Azzolari ruled out the possibility of new investors for the time being. “Eventually, if we do our job well and we go back to a certain size and visibility, then it would be interesting to see what we can do,” he said.

News:

BEIJING, June 17 (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), opens new tab has sold 1.3 million Hong Kong-listed shares of EV maker BYD (1211.HK), opens new tab, (002594.SZ), opens new tab for HK$310.5 million ($39.8 million), a stock exchange filing showed on Monday.

Berkshire's holdings in BYD's issued H-shares were lowered to 6.90% from 7.02% following the sale on June 11, according to the filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.

BYD is one of the investment conglomerate's few non-U.S. investments. It was finalized in 2008, though Berkshire began reducing that stake in 2022.