Starmer’s spy flights for Israel linked to this Gaza massacre
Illegal Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque amid tension
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Scores of illegal Israeli settlers forced their way into the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, local media said.
The settlers toured the compound and performed Talmudic rituals under the protection of Israeli police, the official news agency Wafa reported.
The settler incursion came amid rising tensions across the occupied West Bank over Israel’s deadly assault on the Gaza Strip, where nearly 63,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area Temple Mount, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.
READ: Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli provocations at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque
Microsoft employees, activists protest tech giant over ties to Israel’s Gaza war
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A group of demonstrators, including current and former Microsoft employees, staged a protest at the company’s Redmond headquarters in the US state of Washington against the tech giant over its ties to the Israeli army amid the ongoing Gaza war, according to media reports.
The protest was organized by a group called No Azure for Apartheid, named after Microsoft’s flagship cloud computing service Azure.
Protesters gathered inside the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith in Building 34, where they chanted slogans and held banners.
One sign renamed the office the “Mai Ubeid Building,” honoring a Palestinian software engineer from Gaza killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. Another banner called on Microsoft to “cut ties with Israel,” among other demands.
Police arrested seven people who entered Smith’s office, reports said.
READ: OCHA warns famine in Gaza may soon reach central and southern areas
Bloomberg previously reported that Microsoft has faced a “small but persistent revolt” over the past year from employees urging the company to end its business ties with Israel amid the Gaza war.
The company reportedly sought help from the FBI and worked with local law enforcement to monitor and suppress protests.
The latest demonstration follows reports that Israel’s Unit 8200 used Microsoft Azure to store Palestinian phone call recordings. Earlier this year, the Associated Press revealed Microsoft’s partnership with Israel’s Defense Ministry to process intelligence for target selection.
After the AP report, Microsoft said an internal review found no evidence that Azure or its AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. While it did not publish the review, the company said it would share factual findings from a follow-up review prompted by The Guardian once completed.
Israel has killed nearly 63,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine, rendering it uninhabitable.
READ: Israel claims double strike on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital targeted Hamas “surveillance camera”
Israeli army storms northern West Bank’s Nablus, injures 25 Palestinians
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The Israeli army stormed the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday morning, injured 25 Palestinians and laying siege to its Old City, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement that its teams treated 25 people who suffered from tear gas inhalation during ongoing clashes in Nablus.
One person was transferred to the hospital, while the rest were treated on the spot, the organization said.
Witnesses said clashes erupted between dozens of Palestinians and Israeli army forces around the Old City of Nablus, where youths pelted the army with stones, which responded by live fire, rubber-coated bullets, and tear gas canisters to disperse protesters.
Witnesses said military reinforcements were deployed in and around the city, with troops forcing several families to evacuate their homes and turning them into military posts.
READ: Illegal Israeli settlers establish 3 new outposts in southern West Bank: Rights group
Israeli forces also began conducting house-to-house searches in multiple neighborhoods across Nablus.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army withdrew from the central West Bank city of Ramallah after an hours-long raid that left 58 Palestinians injured and three others detained, according to medical sources.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in separate statements that its teams treated and transported 58 injured people, including eight wounded by live fire, five by shrapnel, and 14 by rubber-coated bullets. Another 31 Palestinians suffered from tear gas inhalation.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed and 7,000 injured in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal. It demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
READ: Netanyahu backs settler attacks in west bank, signals move to annex territory
Summer 2025 ‘almost certainly’ UK’s hottest on record
https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro
The United Kingdom has “almost certainly” had its hottest summer on record, according to provisional statistics from the Met Office.
The mean temperature across the country – which includes overnight lows as well as daytime highs – currently stands at 16.13C (61.03F) with less than a week of the season left to run.
This is well ahead of 2018, the previous warmest summer, which had a mean temperature of 15.76C (60.37F).
Temperatures during the rest of August would need to be four degrees below normal to prevent the record being broken – and this does not seem likely.
This is in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter and drier because of climate change.
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Article continues at https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c1kz18d3wjro
