But he was acclaimed for his reforms while serving as Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, and his new duties included logistics, budgets, reforms, anticorruption measures and deals to secure multibillion-dollar Western aid or loans. After his appointment in January, Fedorov provided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a list of urgent problems and ways to solve them. He mentioned a "chaotic" management system, constant rotations of commanding officers, non-transparent distribution of arms and military equipment, bureaucracy, resistance to reforms from Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii's General Staff of Armed Forces, decision-making based on loyalty and not data analysis, and "isolation" of effective commanders and proponents of reforms. Then on Wednesday, just seven months into his role, Fedorov was removed from his position by Zelenskyy. The changes that Fedorov was trying to bring about in Ukraine's military had angered Syrskii. But Fedorov's ouster appears to have angered Ukrainians even more -- potentially presenting Zelenskyy with a political challenge. Rallies, relatively large by wartime Ukraine's standards, have since erupted in Kyiv and key Ukrainian cities. "He's a young, smart, educated person who proved with his previous job that he really is a reformer and can make Ukraine a nation of the future," Taisiya, who rallied on Thursday in central Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

What is Iran's Pickaxe Mountain? The United States military says it has launched another wave of strikes on Iran, while Tehran says it retaliated with missile and drone attacks against US military assets in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, said it concluded an evening wave of strikes against Iran at 9pm ET on Wednesday (01:00 GMT on Thursday), targeting "Iranian command centres, air defence sites, missile and drone capabilities, and coastal surveillance facilities" in an effort to reduce Iran's ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian air defences were activated over the capital, Tehran, as state media reported attacks across much of the country. Explosions were reported in Bandar Abbas and on nearby Qeshm island in the south, as well as in the southeastern coastal towns of Sirik, Chabahar and Konarak. Iranian media also reported attacks further inland in Rask, Khondab, Khorramabad and Semnan.

It also alleges that Google "downloaded web scrapes of virtually the entire internet, including from known pirate sources and from behind legitimate paywalls". It further alleges that Google copied those works without permission to train its AI models and continues to do so, despite those uses allegedly falling outside the scope of existing agreements. The suit claims the company was fully aware of the legal risks, alleging that internal documents warned using books to train AI models was "highly problematic for Google," and could lead to as much as $100bn in fines. "At no point did Google inform authors and publishers that Google was copying their works as source material to develop and train AI models," the suit alleges. "It's an interesting issue that has a lot of complex dimensions, in no small part because it can be hard to prove what was or wasn't in a training corpus."

Can Nigeria's drone industry deliver Africa's defence sovereignty Across Africa, the ability to defend borders, monitor territory and protect critical infrastructure remains heavily dependent on foreign suppliers. Turkish drones patrol borders, Chinese surveillance systems monitor cities and Russian fighter jets form the backbone of several air forces. For decades, African militaries have turned abroad for critical defence technologies, leaving the continent largely positioned as a buyer rather than a producer. An Abuja-based start-up is attempting to change that equation. Terra Industries, founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka, both in their early twenties, designs and manufactures drones, autonomous surveillance towers and unmanned ground vehicles from facilities in Abuja and Accra.

Canada's Bill C-36 tackles AI privacy. In an era of artificial intelligence, deepfakes and data-driven decision-making, Canada is moving to revise its privacy laws through Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act. Announced in June, Bill C-36 is Canada's first major overhaul of private-sector privacy legislation in more than 25 years. The bill explicitly recognises privacy as a fundamental right and also aims to give children's personal information stronger protections, enhance deletion rights and require greater transparency where automated systems make significant decisions about people. The 18-year-old shooting suspect allegedly used ChatGPT before the attack. The victims' families are now suing OpenAI, stating the company's AI safety team identified violent prompts but did not alert law enforcement.

Is the war entering a new phase? Patriot missile interceptors are the most coveted Western-made weapon Ukraine needs - right now and every night when Russia attacks. Frequent Russian strikes depleted Ukraine's stock of the pricey United States-made interceptors - and US President Donald Trump has now offered hope, giving Kyiv a licence to make them. We'll show them how to do it, it's very complex actually. But it's - you'll figure out the complexity quickly," Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a NATO summit in Turkiye on Wednesday. "This way, you can't complain that we're not giving them enough." Trump has not specified when the production might start - and said that Washington would hold on to its own stash. Ukraine said it will attempt to master domestic production as soon as possible. In the short-term perspective, Ukraine "perhaps, gets nothing," according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University.

South Korean chip giant SK Hynix has raised a record-breaking $26.5bn ahead of its Wall Street debut amid soaring demand for semiconductors used in AI. SK Hynix said on Friday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each ahead of its listing on the New York-based Nasdaq stock exchange. SK Hynix's 177.9 million ADSs are equivalent to 18 million ordinary shares. SK Hynix's initial public offering (IPO) marks the largest-ever listing by a foreign company in the US, surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's $25bn debut in 2014. The listing also ranks as the second-largest globally, after SpaceX's record-breaking $85.7bn Nasdaq listing in June.

Is the war entering a new phase? The overpriced gas Anatoly has been buying in recent weeks in Moscow will ruin his white Kia's engine. "It's low-quality," the taxi driver told Al Jazeera withholding his last name for security purposes. "The engine already sounds like a sick heart The government allows a'temporary decrease in quality,' but what am I to do when I need new spare parts" that are barely available because of Western sanctions, he asked rhetorically. They don't knock, they kick the door," said the 49-year-old with a three-day stubble and bloodshot eyes. Russia's top military brass has not commented on Ukraine's assaults. But even the Kremlin's most outspoken supporters have changed their once-triumphant tune. "We have to get ready for hardships and self-sacrifice," Vladimir Solovyov, a popular talk show host on the Rossiya 1 television network, said in mid-June. Solovyov has a penchant for aggressive, loud monologues and military-style attire. He once urged the Kremlin to "erase" Ukrainian cities with nuclear strikes and said that Kyiv and its Western allies "serve the prince of darkness." Military bloggers are even more pessimistic because of their proximity to the frontline. One of them, Prizrak Novorossii (The Ghost of New Russia), wrote on Telegram in late June that the Kremlin should conduct a massive mobilisation campaign because Russians already "foresee big changes and possible cataclysms because of, to put it mildly, the unfavourable dynamics of hostilities." The reason is simple - outmanned Ukrainians use "an asymmetrical tactic of long-range drone strikes with technological solutions that Russia is only catching up on," he wrote. "So, the question isn't about whether or not to have mobilisation, but about how to conduct it," the blogger concluded, adding that recent events "inspire little optimism." 'I'm afraid my son will be drafted' "I'm afraid my son will be drafted, but we don't have money to send him abroad," Kseniya, a mother of two from the western city of Tula, told Al Jazeera. She withheld her last name and personal details for security purposes. "We've been told a thousand times that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin brought stability, and instead, we see total chaos.

'Digging with a needle': Generals stall peace as Sudan's el-Obeid burns As drone attacks rain down on el-Obeid and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tighten their months-long siege, the capital of North Kordofan has emerged as the latest flashpoint in Sudan's grinding war of attrition. Despite mounting international alarm and renewed US diplomatic pressure aimed at securing a nationwide truce, Sudan's warring generals remain deeply entrenched. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF appear locked in a pursuit of outright military victory, largely sustained by a continuous flow of foreign weapons. Through the lens of the escalating crisis in el-Obeid, a grim reality is unfolding: Civilian suffering is increasingly weaponised amid polarised domestic narratives, while geopolitical manoeuvring repeatedly stalls any viable path to peace. El-Obeid holds immense strategic value.

Artificial intelligence has become the latest issue to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies after US President Donald Trump ordered tech giant Anthropic to cut off foreign access to its powerful Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5 AI models, citing national security concerns. The US issued the unprecedented order for all foreign nationals in and outside the US last week, promoting Anthropic to take the two AI models completely offline to ensure compliance. The two public versions of the model, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, were due to be released in early June. Anthropic said the US government did not provide a reason for the order, but that it was its "understanding" that the Trump administration believed it had become aware of a method of "jailbreaking" Fable 5. The Trump administration's ban immediately sent shockwaves across Europe, which is heavily dependent on US-developed AI.