Spending on AI is forecast to skyrocket to $2.5 trillion in 2026, dwarfing history’s largest scientific and infrastructure mega-projects.

The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian.

‘With hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers spread across the occupied West Bank, and countless legal complications surrounding land ownership, the latest steps are designed to cement the fact that this is not temporary - and the state will not be able to reverse the measures already taken.’

Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in air strikes across the Gaza Strip this weekend, days ahead of the inaugural meeting of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace.’

An Israeli court has denied pleas to allow the urgent treatment of a five-year-old Palestinian cancer patient in Israel, on the grounds that his address was listed to be in Gaza. Judge Ram Winograd said the petition to get him medical treatment in Israel was an attack on the state.

Sweeping new measures that expand Israeli control in the occupied West Bank will cement de facto annexation and bring an end to the Oslo Accords, analysts say, dashing hopes for a Palestinian state.

‘The neoliberal elite view the rest of us as non-player characters … Seen in this larger frame, what does it matter if children suffer, either in Gaza or in the mansions of a billionaire?’

The Washington Post’s decision to lay off more than 300 journalists is ‘part of a broader contraction in western media, one that is hollowing out international reporting at a moment of unprecedented global crises.’

A UK court has found six Palestine Action activists not guilty of aggravated burglary, after a months-long trial in connection with a break-in to an Israeli-owned arms factory.

Newly released files detail a shipment of sacred cloth from the Kaaba in Mecca to the US, arranged through contacts linked to the UAE and delivered to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Reporting and satellite analysis shows that Israel has cleared land in Rafah, southern Gaza, to construct an enormous facility - described as a ‘human-sorting mechanism reminiscent of Nazi-era selection points’ - to entrench its military control and deter Palestinians from returning home.

‘Netanyahu is hatching plans to attack Iran because every other move he has made has failed. Iran’s battle for survival is the region’s battle for survival - and absolutely no Arab ruler should forget that.’

Israel shells and bulldozes Gaza City as it finds remains of last captive

‘What sparked Carney’s intervention was not Sudan, Venezuela or Gaza. It was the US threat to Canada and Greenland. A western prime minister took umbrage only when the US, under President Donald Trump, threatened to treat the prosperous West in the same way it has long treated the Global South.’

Netanyahu ⁠has accepted an invitation to join Trump’s ‘Board of ⁠Peace’, despite an ICC warrant seeking his arrest for war crimes in Gaza.

Trump’s Board of Peace: ‘To invite the same cast of characters who allowed Israel to expand to the point at which Gaza exploded, and expect them to end the conflict, is more than just insane. It is criminal.’

Trump reportedly wants nations to pay $1 billion to stay on his so-called Board of Peace for Gaza, with its draft charter noting that states’ membership will be limited to three years unless they ‘contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds’.

Children in Darfur are expected to die from hunger ‘within days’ as famine conditions persist more than 1,000 days into Sudan’s brutal conflict, UN warns.

Iran protests: ‘At its core, this movement is not a revolution, but an attempted disinformation coup crudely masterminded by the US and Israel.’

Southern Transitional Council delegates allegedly held under duress in Riyadh say their Yemeni secessionist movement is disbanding, but the group’s officials elsewhere maintain no decision has been taken.

Iran is experiencing a nationwide internet blackout, according to an online monitoring group, amid escalating protests over a worsening economic crisis

Saudi Arabia has accused the UAE of orchestrating a covert operation to extract Aidarous al-Zubaidi from Yemen after the separatist leader was charged with high treason, intensifying tensions between the nominal allies.

‘Gaza exposed the hollowness of western universalism, liberalism and globalisation. Venezuela extends the lesson into the western hemisphere, with a clarity that even allies cannot easily obscure.’

Israel’s opposition leader has urged Iran to ‘pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela,’ in an apparent threat of violent regime change.

UAE-backed separatists in southern Yemen vow to hold independence referendum amid deadly fighting with Saudi Arabia and its local allies

Iran protests: ‘What we are witnessing is not a political revolution, but the desperate gasps of a society whose economic buffer, the middle class, has been systematically hollowed out by an inhumane, punitive policy of international isolation.’

In Gaza, ‘a lifetime can be compressed into a single year. You live both displacement and return, starvation and sating, survival and a thousand deaths in between – and yet, somehow, you still have one more moment to hold on.’

“Saudi Arabia has fired what amounts to a warning shot across an ally’s bow: the era in which the UAE could build a separate sphere of influence inside Yemen, while sheltering beneath the label of a ‘Saudi-led coalition’, is ending” - @andreaskrieg.bsky.social

The UAE has announced that it will withdraw its military personnel from Yemen, hours after Saudi Arabia struck its Yemeni allies and made an extremely rare public condemnation of Abu Dhabi’s conduct in the country.

The rise of Emirati dis-influencers: Open-source investigation reveals the UAE’s sophisticated pseudo-media ecosystem, where right-wing and Israel-aligned commentators masquerade as moderate Arab voices - by @marcowenjones.bsky.social

The US military has reportedly launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria after an attack last weekend on American forces

A year after Assad’s fall, ‘Syria could yet prove to be the turning point of Israel’s increasingly aggressive military ambitions.’

As Israel’s expanding ‘Yellow Line’ swallows Gaza districts, Palestinian families are forced to flee their homes in silence

Reporters Without Borders has labelled the Israeli army as ‘the worst enemy of journalists,’ with more than 200 killed in Gaza since October 2023.

Sudan war: ‘As evidence mounts of the RSF’s barbarous attacks on civilians and cultural institutions, a clearer picture is emerging of an ongoing genocide, backed by the UAE and tacitly enabled by the UK. The comparisons with Gaza are chilling.’

Anti-Hamas militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab has reportedly been killed in southern Gaza.

Ben Gvir promotes head of unit involved in executing two Palestinians, and calls for an end to investigations into the killings of Palestinians

‘I was afraid that they might take it all and that I would die’: Sudan’s RSF took blood from civilians trying to flee el-Fasher, according to victims, witnesses and aid workers.

Dozens of Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’ deal came into effect last month, according to Unicef.

Why the ‘international’ media suddenly cares about Sudan: When more than two years of brutal warfare devolved into wholesale ethnic slaughter, western journalists could no longer look away, writes @barrymalone.bsky.social

‘Facing record opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, America’s elites are seizing control of news and tech companies to suppress criticism and rescue a crumbling narrative.’

Lebanon is filing an ‘urgent complaint’ to the UN over allegations that Israel is building a wall in occupied territory in the country’s south.

An Israel-backed armed group that has been accused of stealing aid in Gaza is set to oversee the ‘rehabilitation’ of Rafah city, according to Israeli media.

‘The BBC is punished for the wrong things. It loses its leaders over an editing error, while escaping accountability for its editorial failures on Gaza.’

The next country to enter the Abraham Accords tonight will be Kazakhstan, according to an Axios report, as the US pushes to expand Israel normalization scheme

‘The loss of el-Fasher closes one chapter of Sudan’s tragedy and opens a darker one. It deepens the country’s fragmentation, tests the limits of humanitarian endurance, and highlights the silence of a world that has watched for too long.’

Despite the ceasefire deal, Gaza continues to face a severe water crisis after two years of Israel’s genocidal war, with around 85 percent of its water needs going unmet, according to local officials.

Satellite images show that most of the 260,000 civilians in Sudan’s el-Fasher are likely still trapped, as mass RSF killings continue

Breaking: Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli military to carry out ‘powerful’ strikes on Gaza

A UN agency has warned that Gaza is buried under more than 61 million tonnes of debris, with three quarters of buildings in the besieged enclave destroyed by two years of Israeli attacks.