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Israel's choice, Trump's jury pool and boomers' big houses

 
Today's International story

How will Israel respond to Iran's direct attack?

What happened
Israel's War Cabinet met late Sunday but did not decide how Israel should respond to Iran's Saturday attack. Israeli air defenses and U.S., British, French and Arab military assets shot down 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles Iran fired at Israel. The strike, Iran's first direct attack on Israel after decades of shadow war, caused minor damage at an Israeli airbase and seriously injured a Bedouin girl, Israeli officials said.

Who said what
"We will build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us," said Benny Gantz, one of three voting War Cabinet members. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the U.S. won't participate in a retaliatory strike and said Israel's "spectacular" success in thwarting Iran's attack created "space and flexibility" to "slow things down and think through" the best response, a senior White House adviser said Sunday.

The commentary
For Israel, "striking back hard on Iranian soil could invite far more devastating retaliation" and fracture its new anti-Iran regional coalition, The Wall Street Journal said. "But not responding at all, or too weakly, could also erode deterrence," leaving Israel "vulnerable to future Iranian barrages."

What next?
If Israel heeds "Biden's advice not to hit back, the Middle East might be able to take a breath," said Jeremy Bowen at the BBC. The U.S. expects "Israel to respond in some fashion," Politico said, but it's urging "a limited response as opposed to an all-out armed counterattack."

 
 
Today's NATIONAL story

Trump's first criminal trial starts with jury picks

What happened
Former President Donald Trump's first criminal trial begins on Monday with jury selection. The 12 jurors will decide if Trump is guilty of business fraud in connection with 2016 hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of buying Daniels' silence about an alleged extramarital affair to influence the 2016 election.

Who said what
Manhattan is heavily Democratic, but "voters and jurors are two different types of people," defense attorney Ross Cellino told The Washington Post. Jurors "take their oath seriously to evaluate the evidence presented to them" and "appreciate the gravity of their vote in a trial." Trump needs just "one angry juror" to trigger a mistrial, Norman Eisen said at CNN.

The commentary
This hush money case has the "lowest stakes of the four prosecutions he faces," The Wall Street Journal said. But it "may be the only one of Trump's criminal cases to wrap before Election Day."

What next?
After the jury is selected, the trial is "likely to last from six to eight weeks," the Journal said.

 
 
Today's Demographics Story

Empty-nest boomers aren't selling their big homes

What happened
About 28% of U.S. houses with three ore more bedrooms are owned by baby boomers living alone or with another adult, while millennials with children own 14% of such homes, Redfin found in a recent analysis of 2022 census data. And most Americans 60 and older don't intend to ever move, according to a recent Fannie May survey.

Who said what
Boomers tend to have low housing costs and most of them "are only in their 60s, still young enough that they can take care of themselves and their home without help," said Redfin senior economist Sheharyar Bokhari.

The commentary
"'OK Boomer' might sting more when it comes from millennials eyeing the keys to your three-bedroom house," Sami Sparber said at Axios.

What next?
Empty-nest boomers have defied expectations they would sell "their big houses en masse," The Wall Street Journal said, but even if they did, it "wouldn't actually solve the overarching issue that there are not enough homes on the market. Instead, it would likely lead to more competition for smaller homes."

 
 

It's not all bad

For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set limits for six types of hazardous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) found in drinking water. Known as "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down, PFAS are common in the environment and pose significant health risks. The EPA's action will reduce PFAS exposure for about 100 million people, officials said. Public health advocates called the limits "historic" and estimated they could prevent thousands of illnesses, including cancers.

 
 
Under the radar

Technology is accelerating the rate of language disappearance, even while it offers the hope of preserving those that are endangered or extinct. A big danger for many languages is the "shift into the digital age," said Fortune. As humans increasingly communicate online, languages that aren't supported by dominant platforms are likely to be forgotten. A language is lost every three to four months — the "fastest rate in recorded history," said Forbes, accelerated by the spread of internet English as a "lingua franca of our technical age."

Almost half of the world's 7,000 spoken languages are under the threat of extinction, said the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Several times every year, the last speaker of a language dies, with no new speakers to take their place. One indigenous language dies every two weeks, said the United Nations. 

For millions of speakers of languages that lack digital texts and fonts, "much of modern life is off limits," said The Newsroom. Many languages have scripts that are not part of the Unicode standard for digital text and characters. One "particularly concerning" study published in 2013 predicted that "less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm," said Karthik Chidambaram, a native Tamil speaker, in Fortune. The study warned of a "massive die-off caused by the digital divide." 

"Languages have deep historical, cultural, social relevance and value," said Stanford University Professor Tom Mullaney. "The wisdom and experience that would be lost if humanity doesn't get this right is incalculable."

 
 
On this day

April 15, 1912

The RMS Titanic, a luxury ocean liner, sank on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg. There were not enough lifeboats for everyone onboard and more than 1,500 people died when the Titanic slipped beneath the waves. The wreck of the Titanic remains one of the worst maritime disasters in history.

 
 
TODAY’S newspaperS

Despite former President Donald Trump's "best efforts, his criminal trial has arrived," The Wall Street Journal says on Monday's front page. Trump is trying out a "risky" defense strategy of "deny, delay and denigrate" in his Manhattan trial, The Washington Post says. The first-of-its-kind trial, centering around a "hush payment to a porn star," really "transcends sex, money and politics," the Los Angeles Times says. It's "about what a U.S. leader can 'get away with.'"

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Viva el gato!

Feral cats living at Mexico's National Palace will not be evicted when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's term ends later this year. López Obrador gave the 19 cats "living fixed assets" status, which "usually applies to furniture or buildings," The Associated Press said. The country's treasury is now obligated to feed and take care of the animals for the rest of their lives. The cats make their presence known in the palace, sometimes even walking into presidential meetings.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harold Maass, Harriet Marsden, Devika Rao and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Amir Cohen / Reuters; Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images; Fancy/Veer/Corbis by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images