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Lebanon’s Hezbollah rejects cabinet decision to disarm it

Hezbollah said Wednesday that it would treat a Lebanese government decision to disarm the militant group “as if it did not exist”, accusing the cabinet of committing a “grave sin”.Amid heavy US pressure and fears Israel could expand its strikes on Lebanon, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Tuesday that the government had tasked the army with developing a plan to restrict weapons to government forces by year end.The plan is to be presented to the government by the end of August for discussion and approval, and another cabinet meeting is scheduled for Thursday to continue the talks, including on a US-proposed timetable for disarmament.Hezbollah said the government had “committed a grave sin by taking the decision to disarm Lebanon of its weapons to resist the Israeli enemy”.The decision is unprecedented since Lebanon’s civil war factions gave up their weapons three and a half decades ago.”This decision undermines Lebanon’s sovereignty and gives Israel a free hand to tamper with its security, geography, politics and future existence… Therefore, we will treat this decision as if it does not exist,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement.- ‘Serves Israel’s interests’ -The government said its decision came as part of implementing a November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which culminated in two months of full-blown war.Hezbollah said it viewed the government’s move as “the result of dictates from US envoy” Tom Barrack.It “fully serves Israel’s interests and leaves Lebanon exposed to the Israeli enemy without any deterrence”, the group said.Hezbollah was the only faction that kept its weapons after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.It emerged weakened politically and militarily from its latest conflict with Israel, its arsenal pummelled and its senior leadership decimated.Israel has kept up its strikes on Hezbollah and other targets despite the November truce, and has threatened to keep doing so until the group has been disarmed.An Israeli strike on the southern town of Tulin on Wednesday killed one person and wounded another, the health ministry said.Israel also launched a series of air strikes on southern Lebanon, wounding at least two people according to the health ministry.The Israeli military said it struck “weapons storage facilities, a missile launcher and Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure which stored engineering tools that allowed for the re-establishment of terrorist infrastructure in the area”.Hezbollah said Israel must halt the attacks before any domestic debate about its weapons and a new defence strategy could begin.- ‘Pivotal moment’ -“We are open to dialogue, ending the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, liberating its land, releasing prisoners, working to build the state, and rebuilding what was destroyed by the brutal aggression,” the group said.Hezbollah is “prepared to discuss a national security strategy”, but not under Israeli fire, it added.Two ministers affiliated with Hezbollah and its ally the Amal movement walked out of Tuesday’s meeting.Hezbollah described the walkout as “an expression of rejection” of the government’s “decision to subject Lebanon to American tutelage and Israeli occupation”.The Amal movement, headed by parliament speaker Nabih Berri, accused the government of “rushing to offer more gratuitous concessions” to Israel when it should have sought to end the ongoing attacks.It called Thursday’s cabinet meeting “an opportunity for correction”.Hezbollah opponent the Lebanese Forces, one of the country’s two main Christian parties, said the cabinet’s decision to disarm the militant group was “a pivotal moment in Lebanon’s modern history — a long-overdue step toward restoring full state authority and sovereignty”.The Free Patriotic Movement, the other major Christian party and a former ally of Hezbollah, said it was in favour of the army receiving the group’s weapons “to strengthen Lebanon’s defensive power”.Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a televised interview that any decision on disarmament “will ultimately rest with Hezbollah itself”.”We support it from afar, but we do not intervene in its decisions,” he added, noting that the group had “rebuilt itself” following setbacks during its war with Israel.

Grok, is that Gaza? AI image checks mislocate news photographs

This image by AFP photojournalist Omar al-Qattaa shows a skeletal, underfed girl in Gaza, where Israel’s blockade has fuelled fears of mass famine in the Palestinian territory.But when social media users asked Grok where it came from, X boss Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot was certain that the photograph was taken in Yemen nearly seven years ago.The AI bot’s untrue response was widely shared online and a left-wing pro-Palestinian French lawmaker, Aymeric Caron, was accused of peddling disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war for posting the photo. At a time when internet users are turning to AI to verify images more and more, the furore shows the risks of trusting tools like Grok, when the technology is far from error-free.Grok said the photo showed Amal Hussain, a seven-year-old Yemeni child, in October 2018.In fact the photo shows nine-year-old Mariam Dawwas in the arms of her mother Modallala in Gaza City on August 2, 2025.Before the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Mariam weighed 25 kilograms, her mother told AFP.Today, she weighs only nine. The only nutrition she gets to help her condition is milk, Modallala told AFP and even that’s “not always available”.Challenged on its incorrect response, Grok said: “I do not spread fake news; I base my answers on verified sources.”The chatbot eventually issued a response that recognised the error — but in reply to further queries the next day, Grok repeated its claim that the photo was from Yemen.The chatbot has previously issued content that praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and that suggested people with Jewish surnames were more likely to spread online hate.- Radical right bias -Grok’s mistakes illustrate the limits of AI tools, whose functions are as impenetrable as “black boxes”, said Louis de Diesbach, a researcher in technological ethics.”We don’t know exactly why they give this or that reply, nor how they prioritise their sources,” said Diesbach, author of a book on AI tools, “Hello ChatGPT”.Each AI has biases linked to the information it was trained on and the instructions of its creators, he said. In the researcher’s view Grok, made by Musk’s xAI start-up, shows “highly pronounced biases which are highly aligned with the ideology” of the South African billionaire, a former confidante of US President Donald Trump and a standard-bearer for the radical right. Asking a chatbot to pinpoint a photo’s origin takes it out of its proper role, said Diesbach.”Typically, when you look for the origin of an image, it might say: ‘This photo could have been taken in Yemen, could have been taken in Gaza, could have been taken in pretty much any country where there is famine’.”AI does not necessarily seek accuracy — “that’s not the goal,” the expert said.Another AFP photograph of a starving Gazan child by al-Qattaa, taken in July 2025, had already been wrongly located and dated by Grok to Yemen, 2016.That error led to internet users accusing the French newspaper Liberation, which had published the photo, of manipulation.- ‘Friendly pathological liar’ -An AI’s bias is linked to the data it is fed and what happens during fine-tuning — the so-called alignment phase — which then determines what the model would rate as a good or bad answer.”Just because you explain to it that the answer’s wrong doesn’t mean it will then give a different one,” Diesbach said.”Its training data has not changed and neither has its alignment.”Grok is not alone in wrongly identifying images.When AFP asked Mistral AI’s Le Chat — which is in part trained on AFP’s articles under an agreement between the French start-up and the news agency — the bot also misidentified the photo of Mariam Dawwas as being from Yemen.For Diesbach, chatbots must never be used as tools to verify facts.”They are not made to tell the truth,” but to “generate content, whether true or false”, he said. “You have to look at it like a friendly pathological liar — it may not always lie, but it always could.”

Israel orders army to execute govt decisions on Gaza

Israel’s military will have to execute any government decisions on Gaza, the defence minister said Wednesday after reported disagreements over the prospect of a full occupation of the Palestinian territory.As the war nears its 23rd month, signs of a rift over Israel’s strategy have emerged with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preparing to announce a new plan.Netanyahu is expected to convene his security cabinet on Thursday to finalise a decision on the expansion of the offensive, Israeli media reported.He has said Israel must “complete” the defeat of Palestinian militant group Hamas in order to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza since the October 2023 attack that triggered the war.The Israeli press, citing officials speaking on condition of anonymity, has predicted an escalation of operations, including in densely populated areas where hostages are believed to be held, such as Gaza City and refugee camps.On Wednesday, the military issued a fresh evacuation call for parts of Gaza City, in the north, and Khan Yunis in the south, where a spokesman said ground troops were preparing to “expand the scope of combat operations”.Media reports in Israel have said Netanyahu and his cabinet may order a full military occupation of Gaza, allegedly sparking dissension from armed forces chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir.On Tuesday, Netanyahu held a three-hour meeting with security chiefs including Zamir to discuss options for the continuation of the war, the premier’s office said in a statement.At the meeting, Zamir warned that a full occupation would be like “walking into a trap”, public broadcaster Kan reported.Channel 12 television said the armed forces chief suggested alternatives to a full occupation, such as encircling specific areas where Hamas militants are believed to be hunkering down.Defence Minister Israel Katz said in post on X that while “it is the right and duty of the chief of staff to express his position in the appropriate forums”, the military is bound by any decisions made by the government.”Once decisions are made by the political echelon, the IDF will execute them with determination and professionalism,” Katz said, using an acronym for the Israeli military.- Trump says ‘up to Israel’ -Opposition leader Yair Lapid said he told Netanyahu in a Wednesday meeting that “occupying Gaza is a very bad idea… operationally, morally and economically”.US President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday he was not aware of plans to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, but said that such a decision would be “up to Israel”.The Israeli government is under growing pressure to bring the war to an end, with mounting concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and increasing alarm among Israelis about the fate of the remaining hostages.Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.International criticism has surged over the suffering of the more than two million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza after the United Nations warned that famine is unfolding in the territory.According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, just 1.5 percent of Gaza’s farmland is accessible and undamaged — less than a square mile — according to the latest satellite survey published Wednesday. “Gaza is now on the brink of a full-scale famine,” the FAO’s director-general Qu Dongyu said in a statement.”People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods.”- ‘Dangerous roads’ -Gaza’s civil defence agency said that at least 22 people were killed overnight when an aid truck overturned onto a crowd of people hoping to collect food rations.”The truck overturned while hundreds of civilians were waiting for food aid” in central Gaza, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.He said that “the truck had been forced by the Israeli army to take dangerous roads” that had been damaged in bomardments.The Hamas-run government accused Israel of “deliberately obstructing the safe passage and distribution of the aid”.Asked by AFP, a military official said the army was not involved in the incident.At the end of May, Israel eased the aid blockade it had imposed in early March. But the United Nations says the quantities of aid being allowed into Gaza are still insufficient.The October 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.The Israeli offensive has killed at least 61,158 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Trump hikes India levy over Russian oil as tariff deadline approaches

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered steeper tariffs on Indian goods over New Delhi’s continued purchase of Russian oil, opening a new front in his trade wars hours before another wave of duties takes effect.The additional 25-percent tariff on Indian goods, coming into place in three weeks, stacks atop a separate 25-percent duty entering …

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Egypt sets opening of $1 bn Pyramids museum for Nov 1

Egypt said on Wednesday that its much-anticipated new $1-billion archaeological museum near the Pyramids of Giza will officially open on November 1 after several delays.Authorities hope that the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which boasts the treasures of Tutankhamun among its collection of more than 100,000 ancient Egyptian artefacts, will attract visitors from around the world.Official say that at 50 hectares (124 acres), the museum will be the largest in the world dedicated to a single civilisation.Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly told a cabinet meeting that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had approved the new opening date.He said the opening would “an exceptional event” that would showcase Egypt’s cultural heritage and attract visitors from around the world.It had been set for July 3 but was postponed when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities on June 13 sparking a 12-day war that closed airspace across much of the Middle East.The project has faced a series of setbacks, including political unrest and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.Authorities anticipate that the museum will draw five million visitors per year in a major boost to the tourism industry, which is a key foreign exchange earner for Egypt.