— On August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion occurred at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon.

— The explosion was caused by the detonation of approximately 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical, which had been improperly stored in a warehouse for six years after being confiscated from a cargo ship.

— The blast registered as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, killing at least 218 people, injuring over 7,000, and displacing approximately 300,000 residents.

— The explosion caused an estimated $15 billion in property damage, affecting around 77,000 apartments and leaving a significant portion of the city in ruins.

— Gen. Michael Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, is expected in Israel TODAY to finalize preparations with the IDF.

— US President Joe Biden will convene his national security team TODAY to discuss developments in the Middle East.

Israel will receive a decisive response at the right place and time. It will know it made a mistake.

Tehran does not seek to escalate regional tensions, but "punishing Israel is necessary".

— Nezha-SeaDart is a tail-sitting fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hybrid aerial underwater vehicle.

— It can vertically take off and land from ground and water, cruise in the air with lift generated by the wings, and seamlessly cross the air-water boundary.

— This was publicly confirmed for the first time by Col. Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the Israeli army's Center of Computing and Information Systems unit, at a conference in July 2024.

— The army turned to civilian cloud services when its internal systems became overloaded during the ground invasion of Gaza in late 2023. The cloud providers offer unlimited storage and advanced AI capabilities.

— According to sources, the Israeli army is storing some intelligence information collected via mass surveillance of Gaza's population on AWS servers. This allows for "endless storage" of data on almost "everyone" in Gaza.

— The vast amount of information stored in Amazon's cloud has even been used in some cases to provide supplementary information for airstrikes in Gaza, including strikes that killed civilians.

— The Israeli military has been using an AWS-based system for mass surveillance in Gaza since at least late 2022, but its use expanded significantly during the current war.