ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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Scientists from Tianjin University have made a breakthrough in DNA-based data storage. They have developed a new DNA palette encoding method that can successfully encode brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data into DNA and decode it losslessly. This is reported by CGTN, a partner of TV BRICS.
This breakthrough paves the way for the development of advanced medical data storage technologies, which are particularly important for the long-term storage of data on chronic diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and neurogenetic disorders.
Until now, existing storage media have been unable to cope with the demand for large-scale, long-term data storage.
The researchers successfully encoded 11.28 megabytes of brain MRI data into approximately 250,000 DNA sequences, achieving an impressive data density of 2.39 bits per base.
The encoded oligonucleotides are stored as a dry powder, weigh just 3 microgrammes, and can withstand more than 300 reads.
This research marks an important step towards the practical application of DNA-based data storage and could change the way medical information is stored in the future.
Melania Trump seems to have joined a long line of Republican former first ladies who have come out in support of abortion rights, putting them at odds with their husbands' public views.
In a short video clip promoting her forthcoming book, Mrs Trump expressed her support for women's "individual freedom", describing it as an "essential right that all women possess from birth".
It comes a day after an excerpt of her soon-to-be-released memoir, in which she reportedly takes an even clearer pro-choice stance, was published in a newspaper report.
Mrs Trump's apparent stance on the issue appears to contrast with the position of her husband, who has taken credit for helping overturn Roe v Wade, upending the constitutional right to abortion.But it follows a decades-long American tradition of Republican first ladies who - since Roe v Wade was first decided in 1973 - have said legal abortion access should be protected.
In 1975, while still in the White House, First Lady Betty Ford called the Roe ruling a "great, great decision".
Nancy Reagan waited until her husband, President Ronald Reagan, left office before she said publicly that she "believed in a woman's choice", but her position on the issue was reportedly well known within the White House.
Barbara Bush, wife of President George HW Bush, and her daughter-in-law, Laura Bush, wife of President George W Bush, were similar, revealing their stance on the issue after their husbands left the White House.
"I think it's important that it remain legal, because I think it's important for people, for medical reasons and other reasons," Laura Bush said in a 2010 interview promoting her memoir.
Mrs Trump's approach was different.
In a black-and-white video posted on her X account on Thursday, Mrs Trump said "there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth: individual freedom".
"What does my body, my choice really mean?" Mrs Trump continued.
The video comes one day after The Guardian published an excerpt from her new book, Melania, set to be released on 8 October.
In the excerpt, quoted by the Guardian, she writes: “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government."
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes," she continues.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.
"I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
Kate Andersen Brower, a journalist and author of the book First Women, said she was "shocked" by the comments.
"So shocked that I wanted to check it was real," she said. "She's very much been in line with her husband, so on this issue how did she spend all those years watching him derail something that she seems to care about?"
More than the other first ladies, Ms Brower said, Mrs Trump's comments appear "diametrically opposed" to her husband's approach on the issue.
And she is the only first lady so far to make her stance on abortion known while her husband is actively seeking re-election.
Indeed, the timing of Mrs Trump's comments suggest a possible political angle, Ms Brower said.
"It's not out of the realm of possibility that this was done intentionally to come out right before the election, because it could appeal to those swing state voters who are upset about the overturning of Roe v Wade," she said. "Maybe they could see this as a sign that he [Trump] perhaps is softening on abortion."
But Republican strategist Rina Shah offered a different view.
The notion of Mrs Trump trying to help out her husband "doesn’t track with the Melania we know", she said.
"At this point in the game it doesn’t change anything, and she knows that," Ms Shah said. "Early ballots have already gone out in certain places. It’s just too late."
Abortion access is a key issue in next month's 2024 election - and it is considered a weak point for the Republican Party, which has struggled to appeal to a conservative base that opposes the procedure and a wider electorate that supports abortion access.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump's position on the issue has fluctuated.
Earlier this week, the Republican presidential nominee said for the first time that he would veto any federal abortion ban in the unlikely event that such a measure ever passed Congress.
The BBC has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has sought to capitalise on Trump's position in an effort to galvanise voters.
She has regularly cast Trump as a threat to women's autonomy because of the overturning of Roe v Wade, which took place after he appointed a conservative majority to the Supreme Court.
“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump Abortion Ban that threatens their health, their freedom, and their lives," Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign
The huge asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone, scientists have confirmed.
A second, smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater during the same era.
It would have been a “catastrophic event”, the scientists say, causing a tsunami at least 800m high to tear across the Atlantic ocean.They cannot date the event exactly, or say whether it came before or after the asteroid which left the 180km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico. That one ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
But they say the smaller rock also came at the end of the Cretaceous period when they went extinct. As it crashed into Earth's atmosphere, it would have formed a fireball.
“Imagine the asteroid was hitting Glasgow and you’re in Edinburgh, around 50 km away. The fireball would be about 24 times the size of the Sun in the sky - enough to set trees and plants on fire in Edinburgh,An extremely loud air blast would have followed, before seismic shaking about the size of a magnitude 7 earthquake.
Huge amounts of water probably left the seabed, and later cascaded back down creating unique imprints on the floor.
It is unusual for such large asteroids to crash out of our solar system on course for our planet within a short time of each other.
But the researchers don’t know why two hit Earth close together.The asteroid that created the Nadir crater measured around 450-500m wide, and scientists think it hit Earth at about 72,000km/h.
The nearest humans have come to this scale of event was the Tunguska event in 1908 when a 50-metre asteroid exploded in the skies above Siberia.
The Nadir asteroid was about the size of Bennu, which is currently the most hazardous object orbiting near Earth.
Scientists say the most probable date that Bennu could hit Earth is 24 September 2182, according to Nasa. But it is still just a probability of 1 in 2,700.
There has never been an asteroid impact of this size in human history, and scientists normally have to study eroded craters on Earth or images of craters on other planets.
To further understand the Nadir crater, Dr Nicholson and team analysed high-resolution 3D data from a geophysical company called TGS.
Most craters are eroded but this one was well-preserved, meaning the scientists could look further into the rock levels.
“This is the first time that we've ever been able to see inside an impact crater like this - it’s really exciting,” says Dr Nicholson, adding there are just 20 marine craters in the world but none have been studied in detail like this.
With the closure of the last coal-fired power station in the UK, it raises questions about how old fossil fuel infrastructure can be repurposed. One option is to use them to store energy from renewables.
It's an unassuming place for a major era of British history to come to an end. Surrounded by farmland drenched by recent rains and trees with leaves starting to turn ahead of the autumn – all within earshot of the thundering traffic from the M1 motorway – the UK's last coal-fired power station is shutting down for good. As of 30 September 2024 the turbines at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in Nottinghamshire will fall silent while smoke and steam will cease to belch from the chimney and cooling towers that dominate this part of the landscape.
The power station, which has been operating since 1967, is to undergo a two-year decommissioning and demolition process.
It's a symbolic moment, a marker along the UK's journey to decarbonisation and net-zero. For centuries, coal was the main source of energy in the UK. It was the life-blood of the industrial revolution – providing the fuel for steam engines and then generating much of the country's electricity. By the 1960s, nearly 90% of the UK's electricity relied upon coal.
Now, for the first time, the UK will not use any coal to generate electricity.It's not clear what the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site will become. There have been suggestions it could house a prototype fusion reactor or some other green industry. Regardless, as fossil fuel power plants are shuttered in many parts of the world, the question of what to do with them will keep coming up.
One promising option is to turn old fossil power plants into battery storage sites.
The intermittency problem
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are the mainstay of the net-zero transition. They don't emit greenhouse gases, so the more they replace fossil fuels like coal and gas the closer we come to net-zero emissions.
The share of energy coming from renewables is rising steadily. According to a report by the International Energy Agency published in January 2024, renewables will generate 33.5% of global electricity this year and could account for 41.6% by 2028.
However, using renewables comes with challenges for power grids. Coal and gas plants can be turned on and off at will, so they can supply more energy when it is needed: they are "dispatchable", in the jargon of the field. By contrast, renewable sources are intermittent and less controllable: the Sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow (and sometimes can blow too much)."With renewables, we have less dispatchable power," says Grazia Todeschini, an electrical engineer at King's College London in the UK.
To some extent, the intermittency problem can be managed by having a diverse selection of renewable sources: that way, if one doesn't generate enough, another can pick up the slack. Nuclear power, which is zero-carbon, also offers a steady supply.
Alongside this, though, countries are investing heavily in energy storage. When lots of electricity is generated but isn't needed, it can be stored – then when there is a shortage it can be released. "The main point is to be able to match generation and demand," says Todeschini.For many decades, the most important form of energy storage was pumped hydropower. Excess electricity was used to pump water uphill, so that it could be released to drive turbines and generate electricity when needed. However, this won't be enough for the renewable era, and hydropower has its own emission problems too. "That capacity pretty much is saturated everywhere, in Europe at least," says Todeschini. "There is no space to build any more."That's why many countries are turning instead to battery energy storage systems (BESS). A BESS site is simply an array of batteries: big ones, about the size of shipping containers. Excess electricity from renewable sources can be dumped into the batteries, ready to be discharged when demand is high.
"In the last 20 years, this technology has improved a lot," says Todeschini. "The control is more precise, and also the cost has decreased."
All of which explains why one of the UK's defunct coal plants is being turned into a BESS site.
Ferrybridge
Near Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire sit the remains of a trio of coal-fired power plants. Between them they operated for almost a century, the first one turning on in 1927 and the last being decommissioned in 2016. The third station, Ferrybridge C, passed into the ownership of energy company SSE in 2004, which ran it until the site's closure and demolition.
Now SSE is building a BESS on the site of Ferrybridge C. It will have a capacity of 150 megawatts, which SSE estimates will be enough to power 250,000 homes. Construction began in August 2023, and in June 2024 the first batteries arrived. The following month, the last of the 136 battery units were installed."We're now at the point all the kit's on site," says Heather Donald of SSE Renewables, where she is director of onshore wind, solar and battery for Great Britain and Ireland. "We're just about to go into the commissioning phase and we're hoping to switch on early next year."
Building an array of batteries on the site of an old coal-fired power station has multiple advantages, says Donald. "First and foremost, there's a grid connection there," she says. That means linking the BESS to the grid is as straightforward as it can be. "Access to grid connections and grid capacity's at such a premium now."The site also proved to have a lot of useful materials and infrastructure. "We've been able to use some of the existing concrete foundations, we've been able to repurpose some of the concrete on site," says Donald. This meant the company did not need to import many materials, apart from the batteries themselves.If the UK is to achieve its decarbonisation targets, it will need a lot more BESS projects like Ferrybridge.
Some indication of quite how many more can be gleaned from the latest Future Energy Scenarios report, released in July 2024 by National Grid. The report finds the UK had 4.7 gigawatts (GWs) of battery storage capacity in 2023. That's a lot, but the UK government has set a legally binding target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Depending on quite how this is achieved, the country will need storage of between 29 gigawatts and 36 gigawatts by 2050. Even the lower figure is only possible if the UK stores a lot of its energy in the form of hydrogen. Currently, most hydrogen comes from fossil fuel sources, so a switch to greener alternatives is needed. If green hydrogen does not take off, the country will need more BESS to compensate.
In short, the UK's BESS capacity needs to increase by a factor of at least six, and possibly closer to eight, in the next quarter-century.
Many more BESS sites are in the pipeline for the UK. In June 2024, plans were approved for a BESS facility in a field near the hamlet of Wineham in West Sussex. Another near Sunderland was recommended by city planners in August. Weeks later, a similar facility was approved for agricultural land in Cumbria.Given the massive increase in battery capacity needed, disused power stations like Ferrybridge C are a tempting option. "To be able to use former energy sites for new carbon-free energy is definitely something we're looking to do more of," says Donald.
Indeed, SSE is already building a second BESS on another coal-fired power station site. Fiddler's Ferry in Warrington, Cheshire, was shut down in 2020, and in December 2023 the company announced it would turn it into a 150-megawatt BESS. Construction began in the spring of 2024.
"I agree it makes sense to use a site where there is already some of this infrastructure," says Todeschini.
That said, not all ex-fossil-fuel power stations will be suitable for BESS. "It really depends a lot on the location," says Todeschini. For instance, a site that's a long way from residential neighbourhoods might not be suitable. Instead, such sites could be repurposed as wind farms or other forms of generation. Todeschini also suggests charging sites for fleets of electric vehicles.
"I'm an advocate for this kind of mixed approach, in general, for the energy transition," says Todeschini. "My approach is to really consider all options."In the Lusatia region of Germany, there is an intricate system of coal mines and thermal power plants operated by the energy company LEAG. In 2023, the company – which specialises in the dirtiest form of coal, lignite – announced a plan to transform the entire complex into a "green energy hub". This will include wind and solar, hydrogen and batteries, and is intended to be completed by 2040. An early step will be to convert the Boxberg coal plant into a BESS facility, to be operational by 2027. In June 2024, LEAG secured €58 million of European Union funding to support the project.
On the other side of the world, the former Liddell Power Station in New South Wales, Australia, is becoming the Liddell Battery. The site's owner AGL Energy announced the project in December 2023 and construction began in June 2024. The 500-megawatt batteries should come online in December 2025.
Finally, Nevada is home to a project that is already storing and supplying electricity. The coal-fired Reid Gardner Power Station, 50 miles (80km) north-east of Las Vegas, was demolished in 2020. A company called Energy Vault has since replaced it with the Reid Gardner Battery Energy Storage System, which has a capacity of 220 megawatts. The site came online in late April 2024.
The more projects like these come online, the better they will become, argues Donald. "It's obviously an emerging technology," she says. Donald expects BESS to become more efficient and to be able to discharge electricity for longer periods – helping ensure a secure electricity supply after all the fossil fuel plants have been turned off for good.
There have been many moments of extreme danger over the past year. This is the worst.
In the past seven days, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been assassinated, Israel has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, and Iran has fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at targets across Israel.
Western and regional powers - led by the US - have pushed for de-escalation. The UN Security Council called for an "immediate end" to hostilities and the G7, which includes the US, UK and Germany, has called for “restraint”.
But so far those efforts have failed - and the Middle East stands closer than ever to all-out war.
Here’s how the last week played out.
Friday evening: Nasrallah is assassinated.
As the sun set over Beirut on 27 September, the south of the city was hit by a series of huge explosions.
Several apartment buildings had been struck, leaving a huge crater in the ground. Plumes of dust and debris filled the skyline, visible from across the Lebanese capital.
The strike, aimed at an underground bunker, killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Seen as a prize-target, Nasrallah had not been seen in public for years for fear of being assassinated by Israel.
His death capped a week of ramped-up Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah that had left more than 500 people dead.
The week before that, a series of walkie-talkie and pager explosions targeting the group left at least 32 dead and over 3000 injured.
Nasrallah’s death wiped all hopes of a de-escalation, which just hours earlier had seemed possible.
A US proposal for a 21-day ceasefire had been discussed on the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon had even said his side was “open to ideas”.
But hours after the strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on an early flight home from the UN - and any lingering hopes of diplomacy prevailing faded away.
Monday night: Israel invades Lebanon.
Three days later, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon, marking the start of a ground invasion.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its operations would be “limited and targeted”.
Fighting so far has driven nearly 1.2 million people from their homes, according to Lebanon’s crisis unit. At least 8 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
Israel says the operation is aimed at stopping Hezbollah's ability to launch rockets and drones over the border – something it has done on an almost daily basis since Hamas, its Palestinian ally, launched a deadly raid into southern Israel almost a year ago, triggering the current Gaza war.
Now Israeli troops are fighting a ground war on two fronts simultaneously: Gaza and Lebanon. That hasn’t happened in decades.
The last war between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2006, ended inconclusively with UN Resolution 1701, which stipulated Hezbollah withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon.
That never happened, and with Iranian support, Hezbollah grew in strength.
Israel has not said that it wants to remove Hezbollah entirely from Lebanon’s political landscape (as it has with Hamas in Gaza), but for all its talk of this being a “limited and targeted” operation, it’s clear that Israel is ruthlessly determined to cut Hezbollah down in size.
Spurred by an astonishing two and a half weeks, Israel is in an ambitious frame of mind.Tuesday evening: Iran attacks Israel.
The next day, at around 19:30 local time, 10 million Israelis were sent running for bomb shelters across the country after Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
The nation's air defence system sprang into action - and allies including the US and UK were involved in repelling the attack - another sign of the broadening scope of the conflict.
The IDF said most of the missiles were intercepted, but that a small number struck central and southern Israel. The only person reported to have been killed was a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank.
With its biggest proxy group in disarray, Tehran calculated that to restore some semblance of deterrence it needed to do something more dramatic than its last well-telegraphed missile and drone attack on Israel in April.
Hence the larger number of ballistic missiles and the lack of advance notice.
But while the attack was more than purely demonstrative, it did not appear to signal Iran’s desire for an all-out fight.
That’s hardly surprising. If it came to a full-on war, Iran knows that it would lose, and badly.
It could even herald the end of the Islamic Republic.
Israel, with powerful western allies - and a smattering of Middle Eastern neighbours willing to help shoot down Iranian missiles - is a regional superpower.
Iran, economically fragile and led by an unpopular government, is no match. Nor does it have the sort of allies that would be willing to spring to its defence in the event of a confrontation.
The supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, made suitably defiant noises at Friday prayers in Tehran, but Iran knows it cannot afford to escalate much further.What next?
Despite Hezbollah’s devastating losses, it has vowed to fight on in Lebanon.
And history shows us it is easy for Israel to enter Lebanon, but difficult for them to leave.
As for Israel’s response to Iran, the region - and the world - has been on tenterhooks since Tuesday.
US president Joe Biden said he has discouraged Israel from striking Iranian nuclear or oil facilities as part of its retaliation.
A severe reaction seems inevitable, though, and some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent rhetoric suggests that he might be thinking, ultimately, of regime change in Iran.
But Israel’s immediate objectives are closer to home. “Total victory” in Gaza and removing the threat posed by Hezbollah along the northern border.
Israeli leaders point out that they at war on many fronts. Benjamin Netanyahu says there are seven: Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
It’s true that over the past year, attacks have come from all these directions, even though pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria have so far posed little real threat.
We’re not seeing an all-out regional war just yet, but with so many players feeling they have a stake in it, the war in Gaza has metastasised in a dramatic fashion.
President Joe Biden has said he is unsure whether Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding off on agreeing a Gaza ceasefire deal in order to influence next month's US election.
He was asked the question during a surprise appearance at a White House press briefing on Friday, telling reporters: "Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know - but I’m not counting on that.”
Biden then directed some terse words at his longtime ally: “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none," he said. "And I think [Netanyahu] should remember that."
Some Democrats have voiced concern that Netanyahu is ignoring the US president's calls to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage release deal in order to harm the party's chances in November.
Earlier this week, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN: “I don’t think you have to be a hopeless cynic to read some of Israel’s actions, some of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions, as connected to the American election."
Polls suggest the escalating violence in the Middle East and the failure to secure a diplomatic agreement is hurting Biden and his replacement as the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
The president's approval rating among Arab-Americans has plummeted over the past year, largely due to anger at US support for Israel’s military campaign, and this could damage the party's prospects in November.
Biden has been pushing for a diplomatic agreement between Israel and Hamas for months, and has indicated several times that one is close. A deal before the election would be a major boost for the president and the Democratic Party but appears increasingly unlikely.While the Biden administration has mostly criticised Hamas for failing to reach an agreement, the president has also expressed increasing public frustration with Netanyahu, who he recently said was not doing enough to strike a deal.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has rejected suggestions from Washington that an agreement is close.
"Hamas is not there with a deal. There’s not a deal in the making, unfortunately,” the Israeli prime minister said earlier this month just hours after a US official said it was 90% complete.
The increasingly fractious relationship between Biden and Netanyahu, who have known one another for decades, contrasts with the friendly relationship the Israeli leader had with former president Donald Trump, the current Republican nominee.
Israel, meanwhile, has continued strikes on Gaza and pushed ahead with a ground invasion in southern Lebanon. It has also vowed to respond to an Iranian ballistic missile attack this week.
At his appearance at Friday's press briefing, which came as a shock to reporters in the room as it was his first since becoming president four years ago, Biden responded to concern that Israel could strike Iranian oil fields in retaliation.
"The Israelis have not concluded what they are going to do in terms of a strike," he said. "If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields."
Biden caused oil prices to rise on Thursday when he said the US was discussing with Israel the possibility of strikes on Iran’s oil infrastructure.
Iran's missile strikes on Israel were "correct, logical, and lawful", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a vast crowd which had gathered to hear him speak in Tehran on Friday.
The country's supreme leader described the attack as the "minimum punishment" for what he called Israel's "astonishing crimes" while leading Friday prayers in the capital, something he has not done since 2020.
Khamenei's speech came three days after Iran fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Farsi-speaking supreme leader delivered part of his speech in Arabic to address Palestinian and Lebanese supporters.During his sermon, Khamenei praised Nasrallah and voiced support for Hamas and Hezbollah, which he said provided "vital service to the entire region and the entire Islamic world".
He said Iran-aligned armed groups "will not back down" in their conflict with Israel, which entered a new phase after Hamas launched deadly raids into Israel almost one year ago.
Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as other armed groups around the Middle East which have attacked Israel. They often dub themselves the "Axis of Resistance".
In recent weeks, several senior leaders of Iran-backed groups and Iran's powerful military wing, the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Israeli strikes or presumed Israeli assassinations.
The supreme leader's appearance in front of a crowd of tens of thousands in Tehran is a sign of the gravity of the moment for the Iranian regime, which is facing widespread domestic discontent.
It could be read as an attempt to show strength and restore Iran’s credibility as leader of the “Axis of Resistance”.
The public appearance was also intended to show that Khamenei is not in hiding, after reports emerged that he had been taken to a secure location following Nasrallah's assassination.
The Grand Mosalla Mosque was flooded with people after Iranians were given free transport to attend the sermon. A large Palestinian flag was seen in the crowd.
Khamenei holds ultimate power in Iran, but very rarely leads Friday prayers himself.
The last time he did was in 2020, after the US killed Iran's most senior military commander, Qassem Soleimani. The time before that was in 2012.
Iran is still reeling from the loss of its allies Nasrallah and Hamas's political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran in July.
Israel is widely considered to be behind Haniyeh's killing, though it has never commented on his death.
Khamenei also told the crowd that Iran would retaliate if, as expected, Israel launches a response to Tuesday's missile attack.
"If we needed to do that again, we would do it again in the future," Khamenei told supporters.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden suggested a possible Israeli strike on Iran's oil infrastructure had been discussed, as Israel continued to weigh up how to strike back at Tehran.
The US military says it has launched strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthi group in Yemen, hitting 15 targets.
The Pentagon said it used aircrafts and warships to launch the attacks in order "to protect freedom of navigation".
Several explosions were reported in some of Yemen’s main cities, including the capital Sanaa.
Since November, the Houthis have launched attacks on around 100 ships in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels. The rebel group says the attacks are retaliation for Israel's military campaign in Gaza.Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, said the attacks targeted weapons systems, bases and other equipment belonging to the Houthis.
Houthi-aligned media say the Yemeni capital of Sanaa was among cities hit.
On Monday, the Houthis said they had shot down a US-made MQ-9 Reaper drone over Yemen. The US military acknowledged losing an unmanned aircraft.
Last week the Pentagon said the Houthis had launched "a complex attack" on US Navy ships in the region, though all of the weapons launched were shot down.
Sanaa has had a respite from bombing in the past two years since fighting between the warring parties in Yemen largely subsided.
As well as the attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the Houthis have fired several missiles and drones at Israel directly.
In July a drone launched from Yemen struck Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring 10. Last month, the group fired several missiles at Israel, including one that targeted Israel's main airport.
Both times Israel responded by attacking sites in Yemen.
Earlier this year, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the Houthis.
The Houthis are part of a network of armed groups in the Middle East backed by Iran that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
