White House Intervenes After Israel Closed Church Of The Holy Sepulchre Ahead Of Easter Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre was closed by Israeli authorities earlier this month after Iranian missile fragments hit Jerusalem , with restrictions also being placed on who can enter the walled old city - home to all of the most sacred religious sites. This has resulted in outrage among Christians ,...
White House Intervenes After Israel Closed Church Of The Holy Sepulchre Ahead Of Easter Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre was closed by Israeli authorities earlier this month after Iranian missile fragments hit Jerusalem , with restrictions also being placed on who can enter the walled old city - home to all of the most sacred religious sites. This has resulted in outrage among Christians , however, Israeli officials have said that Al Aqsa Mosque was also closed, and limitations were placed numbers of people visiting the Western Wall - and claimed that all of this was being done as a safety precaution. Source: BiblePlaces.com But closure of the Holy Sepulchre for Lent and Easter is basically unprecedented in recent history , and Church leaders say it violates the church's historic autonomy under an arrangement called the 'status quo'. Things have come to a head after on Palm Sunday, two Catholic leaders were prevented from praying at the Holy Sepulchre by Israeli police. The Vatican was quick to rebuke the police decision as "a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure." Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was the top official kept from entering the church, and his name has previously been in the news over the course of the Gaza war, where he called out Israel's military for shelling Christian sites, including a couple of deadly airstrikes on Palestinian churches. Somewhat surprisingly, the Trump White House has gotten involved, exerting some rare direct pressure on the Israeli government over the church closure . "We did express our concerns with Israel with respect to these holy sites being shut down," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says during a briefing - as cited in Israeli press reports . " We want worshipers to be able to access these holy sites . Of course, safety is a top priority, but we understand Israel is working on the security measures to reopen the sites throughout Holy Week, and that’s something that we’re apprec...
An oil tanker unloads imported crude oil at a terminal of Qingdao Port in Shandong province. Photo: VCG A month into the U.S.-Iran war, the unprecedented blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has sent shockwaves through global energy markets. With no immediate end to the conflict in sight, geopolitical risk premiums are rising. The critical question for the global economy is how this supply shock will ...
An oil tanker unloads imported crude oil at a terminal of Qingdao Port in Shandong province. Photo: VCG A month into the U.S.-Iran war, the unprecedented blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has sent shockwaves through global energy markets. With no immediate end to the conflict in sight, geopolitical risk premiums are rising. The critical question for the global economy is how this supply shock will impact China. As the world’s largest manufacturing hub, China is less vulnerable to the immediate disruption than its peers. However, a prolonged hard gap in energy supplies threatens to upend its export-driven economy — even as it perversely accelerates structural tailwinds for Beijing’s green tech dominance.
In this article BABA 1024-HK Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A robot band from LinkerBot performs at a robot 6S store on Jan. 29, 2026 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China. Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images This report is from this week's CNBC's The China Connection newsletter, which brings you insights and analysis on what's driving the world's second-largest economy. Yo...
In this article BABA 1024-HK Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A robot band from LinkerBot performs at a robot 6S store on Jan. 29, 2026 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China. Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images This report is from this week's CNBC's The China Connection newsletter, which brings you insights and analysis on what's driving the world's second-largest economy. You can subscribe here . Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a succinct snapshot of what I'm seeing and hearing from local businesses. Today, I unpack what's next for Chinese companies using AI to make money. As more than one executive tells me, large language models like DeepSeek are no longer enough. What are they looking for instead? The big story Just as Chinese AI chatbots similar to ChatGPT seem to be catching up to their U.S. peers, a new race is shaping up: industry-specific artificial intelligence. That's what companies in China are focusing on, as they pursue AI-driven revenue growth. It's a step forward from the broader category of large-language models such as DeepSeek. Alibaba.com, a platform that connects millions of small businesses in the U.S. and Europe with China-based suppliers, is looking to partner with U.S. AI models to handle the legal, financial and dealmaking aspects of doing business around the world. That's what Kuo Zhang, president of the business, told me. It comes as Alibaba last week launched an AI-integrated upgrade to its Accio sourcing platform called Accio Work. It lets buyers search for parts and customized products on the platform. The tool can also process customs paperwork autonomously and calculate profit margins for businesses, Zhang said. That's critical in a time of tariff volatility. Accio already has millions of monthly active users and hopes to grow to tens of millions of monthly active users by this time next year, Zhang added. Partnering with overseas AI to und...
China’s state-run oil and gas giants are holding back on aggressive expansion plans as they balance market turbulence against long‑term goals for energy security. The country’s big three producers — PetroChina Co. , Sinopec and Cnooc Ltd. — all saw profits decline last year as energy prices softened. The results came as the industry grapples with flattening oil demand, a faster green transition an...
China’s state-run oil and gas giants are holding back on aggressive expansion plans as they balance market turbulence against long‑term goals for energy security. The country’s big three producers — PetroChina Co. , Sinopec and Cnooc Ltd. — all saw profits decline last year as energy prices softened. The results came as the industry grapples with flattening oil demand, a faster green transition and chronic overcapacity in low‑end petrochemicals markets. While last year’s weaker oil price hit earnings, a prolonged conflict in the Middle East would deliver windfalls to Cnooc and PetroChina in particular. Top refiner Sinopec, which recorded the steepest profit drop in 2025, would be forced to pay up for a lot of its crude, underscoring a widening gap in upstream and downstream prospects. Cnooc, the country’s biggest contributor to production growth, remains the clearest beneficiary of a bullish oil outlook, thanks to its low cost-base and high sensitivity to crude prices. Its net income fell more than 11% last year, despite output rising to a record, after Brent averaged 15% lower than the previous year due to global oversupply. The offshore producer has set a modest target for output growth in 2026, while trimming capital spending slightly from last year’s target. The move can be viewed as a defensive response to oil price swings, but the company still reiterated plans for continued upstream expansion through 2030. PetroChina said it could weather current global supply disruptions, as losses from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz accounted for only about 10% of its total oil and gas demand, executives said at a briefing on Monday. The company is the country’s biggest producer. The company said it can offset potential shortfalls through domestic output and non‑Middle Eastern supply, reflecting broader efforts by parent China National Petroleum Corp. to reduce reliance on the Persian Gulf. CNPC is pushing pipeline gas imports from Turkmenistan, Russia and ot...
AI 圈炸了。OpenAI 官方发布了一个 Claude Code 插件 codex-plugin-cc,让开发者可以直接在 Claude Code 里调用 Codex。这是 OpenAI 首次主动把自家工具送进竞争对手的地盘,背后是 Claude Code 年收入 25 亿美元、占据 46% 开发者市场的残酷现实。 还记得今年印度 AI 峰会上,OpenAI 的 Sam Altman 和 Ant...
AI 圈炸了。OpenAI 官方发布了一个 Claude Code 插件 codex-plugin-cc,让开发者可以直接在 Claude Code 里调用 Codex。这是 OpenAI 首次主动把自家工具送进竞争对手的地盘,背后是 Claude Code 年收入 25 亿美元、占据 46% 开发者市场的残酷现实。 还记得今年印度 AI 峰会上,OpenAI 的 Sam Altman 和 Anthropic 的 Dario Amodei 在台上一起联手欢呼,两个人却并没有实际接触的照片吗? 两位曾经的 OpenAI 创业合伙人,因为理念分歧分道扬镳后,此后极度避免公开同框,即使遇到也要刻意避嫌。 但 3 月 30 日,发生了一件很意外的事。 OpenAI 官方 GitHub 仓库里悄悄上线了一个插件,名字叫 codex-plugin-cc 。功能只有一句话: 让 Claude Code 用户可以直接在 Claude Code 里,调用 OpenAI 的 Codex 。 这不是民间开发者的野路子,而是 OpenAI 官方出品。这意味着,OpenAI 主动把自己的编程工具送进了竞争对手 Anthropic 的地盘,让两个原本针锋相对的 AI 编程助手,第一次在同一个工作流里“握手言和”。 AI 圈从来没见过这种操作。这不是合作,更像是 OpenAI 的一次“战略投降”。 codex-plugin-cc:三大核心能力,让两个 AI 互相配合 说白了,这个插件就是让你在 Claude Code 里随时能叫 Codex 过来帮忙。OpenAI 官方文档和推特用户 @reach_vb(Vaibhav Srivastav)详细介绍了三个核心命令。 第一个是 /codex: review,标准代码审查 。 你在 Claude Code 里写完代码,输入这个命令,Codex 就会像个资深工程师一样,把你的代码从头到尾过一遍。它支持分支对比,可以后台运行,而且只看不改,纯粹给建议。比如你刚完成一个功能模块,想要一个“第二双眼睛”来检查潜在问题,或者准备提交 PR 前快速过一遍代码质量,这个功能就很实用。 第二个是 /codex: adversarial-review,对抗性审查 。这个功能最有意思,它不是简单地找 bug,而是主动挑战你的实现思路。Vaibhav Srivastav ...