‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
One afternoon in late 2021, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, met with the commander of Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200. On the spy chief’s agenda: moving vast amounts of top secret intelligence material into the US company’s cloud.
Meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters near Seattle, a former chicken farm turned hi-tech campus, the spymaster, Yossi Sariel, won Nadella’s support for a plan that would grant Unit 8200 access to a customised and segregated area within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Armed with Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, Unit 8200 began building a powerful new mass surveillance tool: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Turkey arrests youth activist after Council of Europe speech
Turkish police have arrested a youth activist after he criticized President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
His arrest comes amid a crackdown on Erdogan's main political opponents, with more than 500 detained in nine months.
Enes Hocaogullari was detained on Tuesday night at Ankara's Esenboga Airport as he arrived from France, his lawyer said.
Wife of South Korea's ousted ex-President Yoon appears for questioning over corruption allegations
By KIM TONG-HYUNG
The wife of South Korea’s ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol appeared for questioning by a special prosecutor Wednesday, as investigators expanded a probe into suspicions of stock manipulation, bribery, and interference in party nominations.
The investigation into Kim Keon Hee is one of three separate special prosecutor probes launched under Seoul’s new liberal government targeting the presidency of Yoon, who was removed from office in April and rearrested last month over his brief imposition of martial law in December.
The conservative's abrupt and poorly planned power grab on Dec. 3 came during a seemingly routine standoff with the liberals, whom he described as “anti-state” forces abusing their legislative majority to obstruct his agenda. Some political opponents have questioned whether Yoon's actions were at least partly motivated by growing allegations against his wife, which hurt his approval ratings and gave political ammunition to his rivals.
“All will be military targets. We will not respect ages. We have already made progress in intelligence work and many have been identified,” warned one flyer in the coastal region of Guajira, dated March 2024, that included a kill list of specific individuals. It warned of a broader attack to come against “sexual depravities in the region: homosexuals, lesbians, rapists, trans.”
These were not empty threats. Even amid the bloodshed of Colombia’s decades-long civil war, the repeated killings of queer folk stood out for their calculated brutality. This April, trans woman Sara Millerey became a household name in the country, after cell phone footage went viral showing her clinging to a riverbank in churning water, in the outskirts of Medellin.
Why are people starving in Sudan’s el-Fasher?
Sudan’s 27-month civil war is being compounded by a hunger crisis affecting the vulnerable, especially the people trapped in North Darfur’s capital, el-Fasher.
Despite numerous pleas for help from the people within, aid agencies say they have been denied access to el-Fasher.
As a result, some 740,000 people are deteriorating from hunger, according to the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies.
IDF chief opposes Netanyahu plans to seize Gaza amid fears Israeli hostages and troops will die
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing fierce pushback, including from the head of his own military, over a proposal to widen his devastating offensive and seize the remaining parts of Gaza.
Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff, is understood to have warned the prime minister that attempting to take and hold the rest of Gaza — which the army physically withdrew from two decades ago — could corner their forces into a protracted conflict and endanger the lives of the hostages.
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