NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which campaign groups say supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024
US tech giant granted ‘unlimited access’ to patients’ data
HEALTH union reps, public ownership campaigners and Amnesty International UK demanded the NHS “cease all contracts with Palantir” today after the US tech company was granted “unlimited access” to patients’ data.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting was urged to reconsider a “staggering decision” to grant external staff from firms including Palantir access to patients’ identifiable data while working on its flagship platform.
An NHS England internal briefing note published today by the Financial Times said it would create an “admin” role which “permits unlimited access to non-NHS England staff” to the National Data Integration Tenant (NDIT) and identifiable patient data within it.
The NDIT is a part of a larger tool made to aggregate disparate NHS data into a single system called the Federated Data System, which earned Palantir a £330 million government contract in 2023.
As well as the controversial US tech firm, access to patients’ data could be given to any other outside firm contracted to work on the Federated Data System.
Previously, access to sensitive information required individuals working on the NDIT to apply for permission for specific data sets, the FT reported.
All-round access was initially meant to be reserved for NHS England employees with security clearance.
Global Sumud Flotilla member Saif Abu Keshek flashes a peace sign after arriving at Athens International Airport on May 10, 2026. (Photo by Global Sumud Flotilla/X)
“I left behind me thousands of Palestinian prisoners—children, women, and men,” said Saif Abu Keshek after he and Thiago Ávila were released by Israel without charges.
As the final two Global Sumud Flotilla members violently abducted at sea by Israeli forces last month made their way home following their release without charge, one of the activists said Sunday that the world must remember the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Ávila—whom Israel accused of having links to Hamas, without providing evidence—were seized in international waters off the coast of Greece during the night of April 29-30. They were among the roughly 175 people aboard the flotilla, which was attempting to break the decadeslong Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to its people amid an ongoing genocide.
After suffering abuse that allegedly included broken ribs, noses, and other injuries, all of the flotilla members except Abu Keshek and Ávila were released. The pair was taken to Israel for further interrogation. Israel twice extended their detention for further interrogation, which, according to their legal representatives, included physical and psychological abuse amounting to torture. The men reportedly went on a hunger strike to protest their detention.
As Abu Keshek—a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin—arrived in Greece on Sunday following his deportation from Israel, he implored the world to remember the suffering of Palestinians imprisoned for their physical and intellectual resistance to Israeli oppression.
“I left behind me thousands of Palestinian prisoners—children, women, and men,” he said in Athens. “I am sure that the treatment I faced does not compare to the suffering they are going through, the testimonies we hear of their torture, of their violation on a daily basis. We have to continue mobilizing. We cannot forget the Palestinian prisoners.”
Saif has been released from israeli captivity and after 6 brutal days, his message is clear – we must continue to mobilize!
Still, thousands of Palestinian prisoners are being held hostage in israeli dungeons, subjected to inhumane conditions. We are one small step closer to a… pic.twitter.com/BN1OkxXaI4
— Global Sumud Flotilla (@gbsumudflotilla) May 10, 2026
Ávila, meanwhile, transited through Egypt en route to his native Brazil after his deportation. He is expected to arrive in São Paulo on Monday afternoon. Ávila’s mother, Teresa Regina de Ávila e Silva, died while he was held in Israel.
Global Sumud Flotilla issued a statement following the activists’ release, which it called “a victory over Israel’s attempts to criminalize the flotilla movement and smear international solidarity with Palestine as ‘terrorism.’”
“If Israel had any evidence to support its outrageous accusations that the flotilla was affiliated with Hamas or engaged in unlawful activity, Thiago and Saif would not be released without charges,” the statement says. “Their release further exposes these claims for what they are: politically motivated propaganda aimed at justifying violence against civilian flotilla participants and suppressing growing global resistance to Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial violence.”
“However, their release underscores a painful reality: Thiago and Saif had governments, diplomatic channels, and international visibility advocating for them,” Global Sumud Flotilla stressed. “Millions of Palestinians living under brutal Israeli occupation have no such political protection. More than 10,000 Palestinians remain imprisoned in Israeli dungeons and torture camps, subjected to starvation, abuse, isolation, medical neglect, sexual assault, and other cruel and degrading treatment, without international intervention or accountability.”
Other Palestine defenders also used the activists’ release to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
“We insist that the global mobilization for the release of Saif and Thiago must not stop but must instead grow for the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners jailed by the Zionist regime,” said Samidoun, also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, “as well as Lebanese and Arab prisoners detained in its prisons, as well as the Palestinian prisoners and the prisoners for Palestine held in imperialist prisons around the world.”
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Ben De Pear accepts the Current Affairs Award for ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ onstage during the 2026 BAFTA Television Awards on May 10, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/BAFTA/Getty Images for BAFTA)
“Just a question to the BBC,” said the documentary’s executive producer. “Given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTAs screening later tonight?”
The makers of a documentary about Israeli attacks on healthcareworkers and infrastructure in Gaza won a prestigious BAFTA award on Sunday—and they used their acceptance speech to lash out at BBC for refusing to air their work.
The film, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,” was originally scheduled to be aired by the BBC in early 2025 before the network announced in June that it would not be releasing the documentary because it had “come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality.”
Shortly after, the documentary was picked up by the UK-based Channel 4 and aired in July.
UK journalist Ramita Navai, the main reporter of the documentary, criticized the BBC for declining to show the film, which she denounced as a political decision.
“Israel has killed over 47,000 children and women in Gaza so far,” Navai said. “Israel has… targeted every single one of Gaza’s hospitals. It’s killed over 1,700 Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers. It has imprisoned over 400 in what the UN now calls a ‘medicide.’ These are the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refuses to show. But we refuse to be silenced and censored.”
🇵🇸🇬🇧 A Gaza documentary the BBC paid for and refused to air just won a Bafta.
The filmmakers used their acceptance speech to call out the BBC directly.
Ben de Pear, the film’s executive producer, also pointed the finger at the BBC as he accepted the BAFTA award for best current affairs television program.
“Just a question to the BBC,” said de Pear, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTAs screening later tonight?”
As reported by Al Jazeera, de Pear after accepting the award also praised Palestinian journalists Jaber Badwan and Osana Al Ashi, who contributed on-the-ground footage for the documentary at the risk of their own lives.
“[We] woke up every day wondering if the two journalists on the ground were still alive,” de Pear told reporters backstage.
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Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak in Washington, DC on January 7, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The Trump administration has conducted more than two dozen surveillance and reconnaissance flights off Cuba’s coast since early February, according to CNN.
US surveillance and reconnaissance flights off the coast of Cuba have surged in recent months as President Donald Trump has issued increasingly belligerent threats to seize the island nation by force.
CNN reported Sunday that the US Navy and Air Force have conducted more than two dozen surveillance flights—mostly of them near Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the country’s largest cities—since early February, after the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. The outlet noted that “similar patterns, in which ramped-up rhetoric by the Trump administration coincided with an uptick in publicly visible surveillance flights, occurred in the lead-up to US military operations in both Venezuela and Iran.”
“The flights are notable not only for their proximity to the coast, which puts them well within range of gathering intelligence, but for the suddenness of their appearance—prior to February, such publicly visible flights were exceedingly rare in this area—and for their timing,” CNN reported.
CNN published its story days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubioannounced new sanctions targeting a conglomerate operated by Cuba’s military and a natural resources firm, intensifying the United States’ decades-long economic war against the island nation.
“Our people already know the cruelty behind the actions of the US government and the viciousness with which it is capable of attacking us,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in response to the sanctions. “They understand, just as the rest of the world does, that this is a unilateral aggression against a nation and a population whose sole ambition is to live in peace, masters of their own destiny and free from the pernicious interference of US imperialism.”
In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, US Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) wrote that the Trump administration’s “blockade of fuel to Cuba, on top of the longest embargo in modern US history, defies the norms of international law that provide for state sovereignty, nonintervention in domestic affairs and the right of nations to trade freely.”
“It amounts to an economic assault on the basic infrastructure of Cuba, designed to inflict collective punishment on the civilian population by manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in which healthcare, running water, agriculture and transportation are no longer available,” wrote Jayapal and Jackson, who visited Cuba in April and witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of US economic warfare.
“During our visit, we spoke with a wide range of Cuban citizens—political dissidents, religious leaders, entrepreneurs, and members of civil society organizations and humanitarian aid groups,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote. “We also met with the families of Cuba’s political prisoners. Everywhere, there was agreement: America’s blockade must end, and a US invasion must not take place.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened a military assault on Cuba in the months since his administration illegally attacked Venezuela and abducted its president.
“Cuba is next, by the way,” Trump declared at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami in late March. “Pretend I didn’t say that, please.”
Citing unnamed US officials, The Associated Press reported last week that the Trump administration “is not looking at imminent military action against Havana” as the two sides continued to negotiate a diplomatic agreement.
AP added that the administration officials cautioned “that Trump could change his mind at any time and that military options are still on the table.”
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NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which campaign groups say supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024
