WORLD AT WAR: The world awaits Israel’s response to the massive aerial attack against the country carried out by Iran overnight Saturday. Israel’s war cabinet met and announced no decisions yesterday.

  Israel says they and their allies shot down 99 percent of roughly 300 rockets, missiles, and dronesfired by Iran in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed seven Iranian military officers in Damascus. Israel said damage was negligible, although one seven-year-old Bedouin girl was seriously wounded by fragments that crashed through the roof of her home. She is reported to be “clinging to life.”

  After decades of “proxy war,” attacking through allied organizations, this is the first time Iran has directly attacked Israel from its own soil. Israel has a long-standing policy of hitting back harder than it’s been hit, but President Joe Biden advised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win” and hold fire.

  Iranian leaders issued a statement saying that with their attack “the matter can be deemed concluded,” but it said that if Israel strikes back, “Iran’s response will be considerably more severe.”

  Saturday night into Sunday morning, Israeli, American and British forces in the Middle East shot down the barrage of fast-moving missiles and slow drones that took hours to fly from Iran. As sirens wailed around Israel, the sky was lit up with incoming ordnance, outgoing defense missiles, and fighter jets chasing down cruise missiles. The chaos in the sky was punctuated with an occasional ground flash as an explosive punched in.

  Iran had given advance warning of the attack to Turkey, which passed the word the US.  It was as if Iran wanted Israel to be ready to mitigate the damage.

ORANGE ALERT: At long last, barring any clever legal maneuvers, jury selection starts today for Donald Trump’s trial in the Stormy Daniels porn star payoff case. It could take two or three weeks to find 18 jurors who are not prejudiced for or against the defendant who cannot and will not stay out of the news.

  Trump said at a campaign event, “When I walk into that courtroom I know I will have the love of 200 million Americans behind me.”

  Trump and his lawyers have done everything they can to stop this trial from opening. Trump has said he will testify to convince jurors of his innocence, but he’s done that before and not gone to the witness stand.

  The former president is aiming to win the case in the court of public opinion more than in the courtroom himself. He can be expected to give daily briefings to the press on how this is a political trial engineered by Joe Biden, even though the President has no control over what happens in the courts, state or federal.

  Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover his payment to Daniels for her silence about their affair. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is also making this about election interference, charging that Trump paid off Daniels to protect his chances of being elected president in 2016.

THAT TIME OF YEAR: It’s April 15^th, tax day. It’s you last day to file returns and send a check to the IRS if you still owe money. Other than that, we don’t want to talk about it.

THE OBIT PAGE: Robert MacNeil, the even-toned and unflappable Canadian-born journalist was hosted for 20 years on public broadcasting’s evening news, died last week in Manhattan at age 93.

  MacNeil hosted alone before he was joined by Jim Lehrer on what became “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” He had been a correspondent for NBC News and reported for the network in Dallas on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But he later became disenchanted with what was becoming the flashier style of the commercial American news networks, and in 1971 joined the Public Broadcasting Service.

  More sober than the commercial anchors, MacNeil and Lehrer were serious journalists who won an Emmy Award covering the Senate Watergate hearings. Lehrer died in 2020.

  Macneil told the NY Times on his retirement in 1995, “I cannot stand the theatrical, prosecutorial interview, the interview designed to draw attention to the interviewer, full of either mawkish, false sentiment or theatrically belligerent questioning.” 

THE SPIN RACK: The Biden administration is giving the Korean Samsung company $6.4 billion to build massive new semiconductor chip plants in central Texas as part of a series of investments in US manufacturing. — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, sometimes a voice of reason, said Donald Trump “absolutely contributed” to the January 6^th insurrection and that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible,” but even felony convictions would stop him from voting for Trump because the economy, border security, and “culture change” are more important. — Top golfer Scottie Scheffler at 27 won the Master’s yesterday for the second time in three years. Also yesterday, golf announcer Verne Lundquist, a fixture of the Master’s for 40 years, called his last match at August National at age 83. He became a little emotional at the end there.  

BELOW THE FOLD: The Nike athletic wear company is under fire by the female athletes after the unveiling of  US uniform designs for the Paris Olympics. The outfits are obviously made for the entertainment of men, not for the women’s performance. While outfits for the male track competitors are units with shorts covering the thighs, the women’s are cut high onto the hip and narrow in the crotch, requiring extra attention to intimate grooming.

  Long Jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall blurted out, “Wait, my hoo haa is gonna be out.” 

  This is Nike’s second uniform blunder of the year. Professional baseball players are complaining that their new pants are transparent.

  Regarding the Olympic outfits, Lauren Fleshman, a retired US world champion runner, seethed on Instagram that athletes should not have to worry about “constant pube vigilance” and that, “If this outfit was truly beneficial to physical performance, men would wear it.”

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