Apple asks US appeals court to reverse Apple Watch import ban

 Apple urged a U.S. appeals court on Friday to overturn a U.S. trade tribunal's decision to ban imports of some Apple Watches in a patent dispute with medical-monitoring technology company Masimo.

Apple told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the U.S. International Trade Commission's decision was based on a "series of substantively defective patent rulings," and that Masimo failed to show it had invested in making competing U.S. products that would justify the order.

Representatives for Apple and Masimo did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.

Irvine, California-based Masimo has accused Apple of hiring away its employees and stealing its pulse oximetry technology after discussing a potential collaboration. Apple first introduced pulse oximetry to its Series 6 Apple Watches in 2020.

Masimo convinced the ITC on Dec. 26 to block imports of Apple's latest-edition Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches after finding that their technology for reading blood-oxygen levels infringed Masimo's patents.

Apple temporarily resumed sales of the watches the next day after persuading the Federal Circuit to pause the ban. The appeals court reinstated the ban in January, leading Apple to remove pulse oximetry capabilities from watches sold during the appeal, which Apple has said could last at least a year.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection separately determined in January that redesigned versions of the watches did not violate Masimo's rights and would not be not subject to the ban. Masimo said in a court filing that the watches "definitively do not contain pulse oximetry functionality."

Apple told the Federal Circuit on Friday that the ban could not stand because a Masimo wearable covered by the patents was "purely hypothetical" when it filed its ITC complaint in 2021.

The tech giant also argued that Masimo's patents were invalid and that its watches did not infringe them.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-asks-us-appeals-court-214822462.html

US on high alert for Iran threat in region after Israeli strike in Syria

  The United States is on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Israel's strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday.

"We're definitely at a high state of vigilance," the official said in confirming a CNN report that said an attack could come in the next week.

Suspected Israeli warplanes bombed Iran's embassy in Damascus on Monday in a strike that killed an Iranian military commander and marked a major escalation in Israel's war with its regional adversaries.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said that seven Iranian military advisers died in the strike, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in its Quds Force, which is an elite foreign espionage and paramilitary arm.

Iran has said it reserves the right "to take a decisive response."

U.S. President Joe Biden discussed the threat from Iran in a phone call on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Our teams have been in regular and continuous contact since then. The United States fully supports the defense of Israel against threats from Iran," a senior Biden administration official said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-us-high-alert-iran-215224372.html

Biden Official Admits Russia Has Reconstituted Nearly All Military Losses In Ukraine

 A top level Biden administration official has issued surprising remarks assessing Russian resiliency in the face of two years of Washington sanctions, and after a grinding war which has likely resulted in at least tens of thousands of troop losses.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke at a Wednesday event hosted by the notoriously hawkish Center for New American Security where he emphasized that Russia's military has almost fully reconstituted its military losses in Ukraine, even as sanctions have tried to dent its military supplies, funding, and capabilities.

"We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily," Campbell told the audience.

Defense News underscored this is notable and surprising given that "Campbell’s assessment seems to contradict those of the Pentagon and America’s allies in Europe."

For example Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently claimed that Russian losses total well over 300,000 casualties since the invasion began, a staggering figure.

Further, this is from an interview with the chair of Lithuania’s national security committee, Laurynas Kasčiūnas:

Q: How long will it take for Russia to reconstitute its forces to prewar levels?

"If we consider in planning a real conventional, division-level war: five to seven years. If you imagine some semi-conventional, hybrid [war], they need maybe two to three years."

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that Russia has certainly been able to keep its military supplies and artillery flowing to the front lines.

In March Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Russia’s artillery shell production increased by nearly 2.5 times over the past year. International reports at the time also acknowledged that Moscow continues to significantly out-producing the West.

The Ukrainian side too appears to have admitted this is the case, with an officer who served under former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny describing that the front lines are at risk of collapse as "There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us."

"We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers," the officer added.

In light of all of this, it's important to recall SecDef Austin's words in 2022 wherein he said a goal of US policy is to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-official-admits-russia-has-reconstituted-nearly-all-military-losses-ukraine