Why have Spain, Italy sent ships to assist the Gaza flotilla? Israel's mass surveillance: Microsoft blocks the army from using its software United States tech giant Microsoft has cancelled some services it provides to the Israeli military over concerns it is violating its terms of service by using the firm's cloud computing software to spy on millions of Palestinians, the company's vice chair and president Brad Smith confirmed. Smith wrote in a Thursday blog post that the company had "ceased and disabled a set of services" to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defence in response to an August 6 joint investigation by The Guardian newspaper, +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. Unit 8200 is the Israeli military's elite cyber warfare unit responsible for clandestine operations, including collecting signal intelligence and surveillance. The investigation by journalists revealed that following a 2021 meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Unit 8200's leader Yossi Sariel, an agreement was reached to collaborate on moving large volumes of sensitive intelligence material into the company's Azure platform.

More than 20 people have been killed in a Russian air strike on a village in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymr Zelensky has said, citing initial reports. The victims were ordinary people collecting their pensions in the Donetsk settlement of Yarova, he said. Yarova, to the north of Sloviansk, is one of the big cities in the region and not far from the front line as Russian forces advance slowly in the east. If confirmed, the death toll would be among the heaviest attacks on Ukrainian civilians in recent weeks, 42 months into Russia's full-scale invasion. At least 23 people were killed in overnight air strikes on Ukraine's capital Kyiv at the end of August.

Ukraine intends to strike deep into Russia following a large Russian drone attack that left 60,000 Ukrainians without electricity, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. Speaking on Sunday after a meeting with his top general, Oleksandr Syrskii, the Ukrainian president confirmed the new planned strikes on X. Both sides have intensified their air strikes in recent weeks, with Moscow attacking Ukraine's energy and transport systems as well as launching deadly strikes in recent days on civilian areas in Kyiv and Zaporizhia, and Ukraine targeting Russian oil refineries and pipelines. Overnight, Russian drones hit four energy facilities in Ukraine's Odesa region, according to the private energy company DTEK. The strikes left 29,000 people without electricity, local authorities reported.

A senior United States envoy has praised the Lebanese government's response to a US proposal aimed at disarming Hezbollah amid Israel's continued military presence in the country. Thomas Barrack, an adviser to US President Donald Trump who serves as Washington's ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, returned to Beirut on Monday after delivering the US proposal during a June 19 visit. The plan called for the Shia Lebanese group Hezbollah to fully disarm within four months in exchange for a halt to Israeli air strikes and the full withdrawal of Israel's military from the five positions it continues to occupy in southern Lebanon. "What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time," Barrack told reporters on Monday after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. "I'm unbelievably satisfied with the response." While Barrack confirmed that he had received a seven-page reply from the Lebanese side, he offered no details on its contents.

Mogadishu, Somalia – Ending the United States' "forever wars" was a major slogan of Donald Trump's 2024 election campaign, during which he and many of his supporters spoke out against American resources and lives being put to waste in conflicts across the globe. But on February 1, a mere 10 days after being inaugurated for a second time, President Trump announced that the US had carried out air strikes targeting senior leadership of ISIL (ISIS) in Somalia. "These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States," his post on X read. This marked Trump's first military action overseas, but it wouldn't be his last. In the time since, the US has provided weapons and support to Israel in its wars in Gaza and across the Middle East; it has launched strikes on Yemen; and even attacked Iran's nuclear facilities.

The IDF said it had killed Izadi in a strike on an apartment in Qom, south of Tehran, in the early hours of Saturday. He had been in charge of the Palestine Corps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps's (IRGC) Quds Force, responsible for handling ties with the Palestinian armed groups. He was reportedly instrumental in arming and financing Hamas, and had been responsible for military co-ordination between senior IRGC commanders and Hamas leaders, the IDF said. In April 2024, Izadi narrowly survived an Israeli air strike targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria - an attack that killed several high-ranking Quds Force commanders. Israel later on Saturday also claimed to have killed another Quds Force commander, Behnam Shahriyari in a drone strike as he was travelling in a car through western Iran.

It is beyond dispute that the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in military intelligence are considerable. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain precisely how AI can enhance the analysis of military data. The aim of this study is to address this issue. To this end, the AI demonstrator deepCOM was developed in collaboration with the start-up Aleph Alpha. The AI functions include text search, automatic text summarization and Named Entity Recognition (NER). These are evaluated for their added value in military analysis. It is demonstrated that under time pressure, the utilization of AI functions results in assessments clearly superior to that of the control group. Nevertheless, despite the demonstrably superior analysis outcome in the experimental group, no increase in confidence in the accuracy of their own analyses was observed. Finally, the paper identifies the limitations of employing AI in military intelligence, particularly in the context of analyzing ambiguous and contradictory information.

The Houthis have claimed to have shot down a United States military drone over Yemen, in the latest attack by the group, which has disrupted shipping trade through the crucial Bab al-Mandeb Strait, drawing US strikes. The Yemeni group has carried out dozens of attacks on ships with links to Israel in a show of solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel's 11-month-old war on Gaza. Yahya Saree, the military spokesman of the Houthi group, said in a prerecorded video message released early on Sunday that the MQ-9 Reaper was shot down by air defences over Marib as "it was carrying out hostile activities". This is the eighth drone of this type to be shot down since the start of the war on Gaza, he said. The group has not so far released footage of the downed attack and surveillance aircraft that costs about 30m.

Mae Sot, Thailand – Once again, the attack came from the sky. The Kachin resistance fighters barely heard the sound of the propellers as the Myanmar military's two drones released their payload above their heads in northern Kachin State in late April. "I fell down to the ground when the bombs dropped," Aung Nge, a fighter with the Kachin People's Defense Force (PDF), told Al Jazeera from an undisclosed location. I was awake the whole time." The drone attack seriously injured three men who were holed up close to the front line in Kachin State where battles with the armed forces have been escalating since October last year. In critical condition, field medics sent the men to a hidden hospital deep in the jungle where they could be treated by professional doctors. Within a day of receiving treatment, however, one of the soldiers started to show symptoms the doctors could not understand and his condition began to deteriorate rapidly. Another man from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), who had been injured in a separate drone strike days after the first attack and appeared to be on the mend with no signs of infection, also took a turn for the worse and died in his sleep. Aung Nge, meanwhile, was about to endure ghastly infections that would spread across his entire body. Doctors told Al Jazeera that the men experienced rapid onset necrosis, an effect not normally seen in a blast wound. Necrosis causes the deterioration of most or all of the cells in an organ or tissue due to disease or the failure of the blood supply. While necrosis can be caused by sepsis, which appears rapidly and is usually accompanied by a fever, doctors said they could find no physiological reason for the rapid deterioration in their patients. Toxic substances can also trigger such reactions, they said. "In close examination of the wounds, they are rapidly necrotising, easily decomposed and not associated with metallic foreign bodies," Dr Soe Min, the veteran trauma doctor who treated the suspicious cases, told Al Jazeera. He has been treating combat-related cases since January 2022 and has seen and treated hundreds of blast injuries. These cases were different, he said. "After two days, all the wounds became blackish in colour with foul-smelling discharge.

The White House revealed it is looking into reports the Israeli army has been using an AI system to populate its'kill list' of alleged Hamas terrorists, hours after President Joe Biden's call with Benjamin Netanyahu. The report cited six Israeli intelligence officers, who admitted to using an AI called'Lavender' to classify as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants -- marking these people and their homes as acceptable targets for air strikes. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the reports had not been verified, but they were investigating. Israel has vehemently denied the AI's role with an army spokesperson describing the system as'auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.' However, during the call Biden reportedly threatened that he would condition the US' support for the attack in Gaza if the Israeli government didn't protect civilians and aid workers from offensive assaults.