An Amazon warehouse employeeBernd Wüstneck/picture alliance via Getty Images
Mar 2, 2026, 7:39 PM GMT
Amazon closed its fulfillment center operations in Abu Dhabi and suspended deliveries across the region, as the company responds to escalating instability that is rippling across its Middle East network.
Iran’s Devastating Attacks Paralyze Amazon Shipments and AWS
Alexa AlixLast Updated: March 4, 2026
5 minutes read
Drone strikes on Jebel Ali port and three Amazon data centres have frozen fulfilment across the region, leaving thousands of third-party sellers unable to ship, sell, or even log in to their stores.
The escalating military conflict in the Middle East has delivered a swift and compounding blow to Amazon’s regional e-commerce operations, disrupting both its physical logistics network and cloud computing infrastructure simultaneously, with hundreds of thousands of third-party sellers caught squarely in the crossfire.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards says they have attacked Amazon’s data infrastructure in Bahrain, according to Fars, an IRGC-linked state media account.
Russian Wildberries warehouses, including one in Moscow, have been destroyed by drone strikes, causing billions in economic damage and significant supply chain disruption. These attacks highlight a new military strategy where small drone payloads effectively ignite highly flammable targets. Warehouses are particularly vulnerable due to vast quantities of cardboard, textiles, plastics, aerosols, and batteries, which burn intensely and spread rapidly. Drones often use incendiary warheads to initiate these catastrophic fires. Although Wildberries is a civilian company, it supplied the Russian military, making its infrastructure a strategic target. This tactic demonstrates how centralized………
…..From a military perspective though, this strike, and the infernos which have engulfed other Wildberries facilities, have some important lessons for the rest of the world. Ukraine has found another weak point in the modern online economy and exploited it effectively.
The question now remains: Why did no one anticipate these major suppliers with sophisticated logistics would require strong protection during conflict?
Western Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem, a place of prayer and pilgrimage sacred to the Jewish people. It is the only remains of the retaining wall surrounding the Temple Mount, the site of the First and Second Temples of Jerusalem, held to be uniquely holy by the ancient Jews. The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587–586 bce, and the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce.
The authenticity of the Western Wall has been confirmed by tradition, history, and archaeological research; the wall dates from about the 2nd century bce, though its upper sections were added at a later date. Texts explaining the survival of the wall vary; one suggests that God saved this fragment for the Jewish people, while another holds that Titus left it as a painful reminder of the Roman defeat of Judea.
Because the wall now forms part of a larger wall that surrounds the Muslim Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jews and Arabs have frequently disputed control of the wall and, often, right of access to it. That conflict has been particularly heated since the Israeli government took full control of the Old City in the wake of the Six-Day War of June 1967.
Arab and Muslim countries condemn Israeli storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque
Story by Al Jazeera Staff
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Israeli settlers at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on July 23 [File: Ilia Yefimovich /AFP]
Eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries have strongly condemned the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem by far-right groups and thousands of Israeli settlers.
In a joint statement issued on Thursday, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and the United Arab Emirates denounced the “mass incursions by settlers led by extremist Israeli ministers into the Noble Sanctuary” of Al-Aqsa.
More than 4,200 Israeli settlers and members of far-right groups stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Thursday, one of the largest incursions this year, to mark the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av.
Boris Epshteyn was born in 1982 in Moscow when it was part of the Soviet Union. He comes from a Russian Jewish family. In 1993, he moved to the United States with his family as a refugee. They settled in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey. He finished high school in New Jersey in 2000. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 2004. Later, he studied law at Georgetown University Law Center and completed his law degree in 2007.
After Senator Frank R Lautenberg died in 2013, Epshteyn publicly thanked him for supporting a law that helped religious minorities, including Russian Jews like his own family, move to the US. Earlier in his career, in 2008, he briefly worked as a communications aide for John McCain’s presidential campaign. In the 2012 elections, he sometimes appeared on TV as a Republican political commentator.
He got in touch with Trump mainly due to his friendship with his son, Eric Trump. They both studied at Georgetown University. After Trump left office in 2021, Epshteyn helped plan and guide Trump’s legal strategy when Trump faced multiple criminal and civil cases, especially after the January 6 Capitol attack and the investigations related to the 2020 election. Epshteyn was charged in Arizona in connection with allegations that allies of Trump tried to overturn the 2020 US presidential election results. He has denied the allegations and has pleaded not guilty.
Some reports allege that Epshteyn asked some people connected to Trump for money in exchange for supporting them for government jobs. One example mentioned is Scott Bessent, who was Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, according to PBS News. Bessent reportedly tried for months to get the job, but Epshteyn allegedly opposed him because he did not agree to pay Epshteyn a large fee or “retainer”.
A longtime Trump loyalist has become one of the president’s most influential advisers, combining legal strategy, political access and personal reassurance.
Boris Epshteyn has emerged as one of the most powerful figures around Donald Trump, operating largely away from public view while maintaining unusually close access to the president.
According to Axios, Epshteyn has become such a constant presence in Trump’s White House that he is sometimes involved in Oval Office discussions without everyone in the room realising he is on the line. Trump is said to frequently place him on speakerphone during meetings, underlining the extent to which the lawyer has become embedded in the president’s daily routine.
His influence rests not only on what he hears, but on the fact that Trump listens to him. The president has reportedly joked that Epshteyn is “like my psychiatrist”, a reference to the frequency of their conversations and the encouragement he provides. One adviser quoted by Axios offered a less flattering assessment, describing him as someone who mainly acts as a cheerleader for Trump.
As Trump’s senior personal lawyer, Epshteyn has helped drive an unusually aggressive legal strategy against media organisations and technology companies. Axios reports that Trump has secured settlements or victories involving companies including ABC, CBS, Meta, Google and X, while other cases against major outlets and organisations remain active.
Epshteyn’s role expanded sharply during the 2024 election campaign, when Trump was facing several criminal and civil cases. He helped assemble the legal team and shape a high-risk approach built on constant challenges, pressure on multiple fronts and a refusal to concede ground in court or in the political arena.
Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist and prominent MAGA figure, told Axios that Epshteyn “delivered” at a moment when Trump’s future appeared to be balanced between a return to power and the possibility of prison. Another regular White House visitor described him as the person who “solves problems” for the president.
His reach now extends beyond Trump’s legal battles. In April, Epshteyn was named chair of Trump Media, while people close to the president believe he also has influence inside the Justice Department through his relationship with Todd Blanche.
Axios says Epshteyn visits the Oval Office about once a week and remains in constant phone contact with Trump. Although some within the president’s orbit are wary of his role, his position appears secure, largely because of his loyalty and his direct line to Trump.
His connection to Trump began around a decade ago, when the then-presidential candidate noticed him defending him on television. After Trump’s break with Michael Cohen, Epshteyn gradually moved into the space left behind in the president’s close legal and political circle.
Today, Axios portrays him as one of the people with the greatest access to Trump: part lawyer, part political fixer and part personal confidant, whose power comes from staying close to the president when many others are kept at a distance.
Back in 2024:
Trump lawyer no longer representing ex-president’s aide after clients became ‘adversarial’
A key member of Donald Trump’s legal defense team has reportedly dropped one of the former president’s associates, Boris Epshteyn, as a client as it became clear that the two were considered adversarial to each other due to a recent Arizona criminal indictment.
Hugo Lowell, political investigations reporter for The Guardian, reported after Epshteyn was indicted in Arizona that “Trump lawyer Todd Blanche may soon have to choose whether loyalty is [with] Trump or Boris Epshteyn — clients who are now likely adversarial to each other.”
Lowell noted that, while “Trump is charged [with] 2020 election subversion in DC and Georgia,” Epshteyn has been “charged [with] 2020 election subversion in Arizona
French model recruiter with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein found dead
Story by Al Jazeera Staff and AFP
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Daniel Siad’s name appeared nearly 2,000 times in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice [File: Cristobal Herrara-Ulashkevich/EPA]
A French model scout who introduced women to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has died at his home near Paris, according to French prosecutors.
Siad was himself under investigation in France over allegations of rape and human trafficking, which he denied.
Daniel Siad is from Algeria, having been born there on October 28, 1957, before immigrating to Sweden in 1980.
Source: Wikipedia
Daniel Siad
Recent photo:
allegations, saying he wanted to be heard and give his version of events.
“An investigation to determine the cause of death was opened on Monday evening following the discovery,” the Nanterre prosecutor’s office said.
An autopsy will be carried out as part of the probe.
Targeted by several complaints, including allegations of rape, Siad was the subject of an investigation conducted by the office specialising in combating human trafficking.
The 28-year-old was struck by a tractor-trailer as he fled federal agents in St. Augustine, marking the third ICE-related fatality in under a week and adding to scrutiny around the safety of immigration enforcement operations.
Coronilla Duran was initially named as the victim by local news operation Action News Jax, citing the Mexican consulate, on July 15. Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance also named him as the victim, News4Jax reported the following day.
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In a further update on July 20, Colectivo Árbol, an Orlando-based nonprofit working with the family, told the Miami Herald that Coronilla Duran had been in the U.S. on a tourist visa for a few weeks and had only been in Florida for a couple of days before he was struck by the vehicle.
His wife only found out about her husband’s death while watching television, the Herald reported. She was said to be working on getting a flight to the U.S. to take her husband’s body back home to San Luis de La Paz.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations since 2006, died suddenly in New York City on Monday, a day shy of his 65th birthday.
The New York Post reported that Churkin was taken ill “with heart problems,” quoting sources. He was pronounced dead at 10:55am local time, the same sources added.
He died shortly after his connections with Epstein were revealed:
Russian Ambassador to the UN (2006-2017). Died suddenly in February 2017. iMessage thread with Epstein includes “Good work on Syria” and brokering meetings with Ehud Barak. Lunch with Peter Thiel arranged by Epstein (Oct 2016). Deceased.
Key Findings
EFTA01619434: Epstein-Churkin iMessage thread: Feb 12, 2016, Epstein to Churkin: “Good work on Syria, markets will continue bad”
EFTA01619434: Nov 21, 2015, Epstein to Churkin: “You appear to have done good work. Congrats” (day after UN Security Council Resolution 2249 on Syria, Nov 20, 2015)
EFTA01619434: Jan 2016, Epstein to Churkin: “Oil now at the 36$ level I suggested” – Epstein advising Russian UN Ambassador on oil markets
EFTA00285348: Jan 10, 2017, Lunch with Churkin and Tom Pritzker at Epstein’s (same day: breakfast with Ehud Barak and Pritzker), six weeks before Churkin’s death
EFTA00285334: Feb 15, 2017, “Tea w/Churkin” at 3pm, followed by Leon Black appointment, five days before Churkin died suddenly at the Russian Consulate in New York (Feb 20, 2017)
Melania was brought to the US by Paulo Zampolli, and he remains her closest friend. Zampolli was also a close friend of Vitaly Churkin.
7 days ago Nev Shalev, in an interview with Zampolli’s ex-wife, Amanda Ungaro, revealed on his Substack, the massive connections with Russia, linked to the UN, of Zampolli via Churkin:
BOMBSHELL CONNECTION: Melania Trump’s best friend Paolo Zampolli was closely connected to the former Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, who also helped recruit Donald Trump in 1987 as a KGB asset, and was very close to Jeffrey Epstein.
See Narativ for more details:
Read alongside the Epstein files, they describe something there is no polite word for: a foreign-cultivated fixer, embedded in the First Family, for decades.
The record, plainly:
Churkin. Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, attended Zampolli’s birthday party and toasted him on camera. Zampolli wrote to Churkin’s private Gmail — and six days after Russia annexed Crimea, his entire message was one word: “FANTASTIC.”
The same channel as Trump and Epstein. Churkin is the diplomat who, according to Luke Harding’s reporting, helped arrange Trump’s first trip to Moscow in 1987 — and the man Jeffrey Epstein, in his own files, boasted he had “coached” on how to handle Donald Trump. Three men, one Kremlin conduit.
Lavrov. Zampolli wrote directly to Vladimir Voronkov, the Russian who runs U.N. counter-terrorism, in intimate Russian. And Epstein named Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as the man who could reconnect him to Vladimir Putin after Churkin died.
The women. Zampolli placed Russian models into United Nations roles — women with documented ties to Moscow, including one who has claimed Putin fathered her child.
The Russia-backed man in the room. Also toasting Zampolli at that party: Vuk Jeremic, the Russia-backed president of the U.N. General Assembly.
The passports. Zampolli represented a Caribbean island, Dominica — though he is Italian — and was known, Ungaro says, for peddling fraudulent diplomatic passports at $250,000 each.
The immunity. Those credentials carried diplomatic immunity. Today he holds a United States government title — Special Envoy for Global Partnerships — that skipped the FBI background check and Senate confirmation entirely.
Amanda Ungaro has a copy of an email where Zampolli is congratulating ‘the Supreme Leader’ for invading and occupying Crimea in 5 days’ (a note he sent to himself).
Just been alerted to threats I was previously totally unaware of:
Volt Typhoon Energy Grid Cyberattack Exposes US Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
The Volt Typhoon advanced persistent threat (APT) group maintained access to a Massachusetts power utility’s OT network for almost a year, highlighting critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.
Home – Security Spotlight – Volt Typhoon Energy Grid Cyberattack Exposes US Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
An Energy Grid Cyberattack on US has exposed vulnerabilities within the US power grid. Security researchers at Dragos uncovered a prolonged cyber intrusion by the Volt Typhoon advanced persistent threat (APT) group, a threat actor linked to China.
The intrusion targeted Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments (LELWD), a small public power utility in Massachusetts. Volt Typhoon maintained unauthorized access to LELWD’s operational technology (OT) network for nearly a year, from February to November 2024.
“One of the biggest challenges with cybersecurity in critical infrastructure is the long lifespan of the devices. Something that was designed and tested to the best practices available when it was released can easily become vulnerable to attacks using more sophisticated attacks later in its lifecycle.”Tim Mackey, head of software supply chain risk strategy at Black Duck, warned
Nathaniel Jones, vice president of threat research at Darktrace, added that the impact on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) is a “continued and growing concern with the applications of AI-based capabilities for both offensive and defensive teams.”
The targeting of CNI entities suggests a strategic goal beyond simple data theft. Donovan Tindill, director of OT cybersecurity at DeNexus, noted that exfiltrating OT data allows attackers to gain geopolitical leverage:
Social engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human psychology rather than software vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to data or systems.
Phishing is the most common social engineering technique, but pretexting, baiting, vishing, and tailgating are also widely used.
The human element is a factor in about 60% of data breaches, according to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).
Generative AI has made social engineering attacks faster to produce and harder to detect, particularly through AI-generated phishing emails and deepfake voice or video impersonation.
No single technical control stops social engineering. Effective defense combines employee training, verification protocols, and data-level controls that limit what an attacker can do even after a successful manipulation.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced coordinated nationwide law enforcement actions on June 30, 2025, targeting North Korean remote information technology workers’ illicit revenue generation schemes that have defrauded American companies and funded the DPRK’s weapons programs.
Summary 1. The U.S. DOJ conducted coordinated enforcement across 16 states on June 30, 2025, targeting North Korean remote IT workers funding DPRK weapons programs. 2. Operation resulted in 29 financial account seizures, 21 website takedowns, 200 computer seizures, and searches at 29 "laptop farms." 3. North Korean operatives infiltrated 100+ U.S. companies, generating $5+ million illicitly while causing $3+ million in damages. 4. Schemes involved stealing classified defense data under ITAR regulations and $900,000+ in cryptocurrency theft from blockchain companies.
The comprehensive enforcement action spanned 16 states, resulting in two federal indictments, one arrest, and the seizure of 29 financial accounts containing tens of thousands of dollars, 21 fraudulent websites, and approximately 200 computers.
This is an extract from a piece by a researcher in The Conversation:
Most plans for orbital data centres depend on the future success of SpaceX’s heavy-lift Starship. But every Starship launch burns over 1,000 tonnes of liquid methane, releasing around 80,000 tonnes of CO₂ (about the same as what 20,000 cars emit in a year). The warming associated with soot emissions in the upper atmosphere is 500 times more intense than the same emissions at ground level. We know soot from rockets reduces stratospheric ozone – the stuff shielding us from harmful UV rays. In the lower atmosphere, most soot falls back to Earth in weeks. In the stratosphere, soot stays there for up to four years, prolonging its damaging effects.
While it is always sunny in space, solar panels degrade much quicker there. Microchips are also easily damaged, falling prey to a phenomenon known as “bit flipping” – when high-energy particles rewrite memory hardware randomly changing data from 1 to 0. Retrieving busted hardware from space is not financially viable. SpaceX satellites have a five-year shelf life before being incinerated as they fall back to Earth. The environmental impacts of things burning up in the atmosphere are not well known. Musk’s AI satellites would be connected by lasers. Should any one of the million or so satellites become untethered and collide with another, it would create further debris, creating more risk of collisions, more debris, and so on. Scientists call this the Kesler Syndrome and worry that orbital debris fields could hinder human activities in space for a very long time.
Orbital data centres would have a huge water footprint too. To catch toxic dust and protect their concrete launch pad from heat damage, a typical spaceport uses a deluge system releasing around 2 million litres of water with every launch. SpaceX has repeatedly broken environmental laws with its deluge system, allowing contaminated run-off from Starship launches to enter protected waters off the coast of Texas.
Some suggest these sci-fi schemes are designed to prop up SpaceX’s teetering stock price, rather than humanity’s computing needs. Others see orbital data centres as just one of many ambitious visions to tackle the environmental costs of AI. Either way, my research suggests this quest to off-world the industry’s headaches will have profound implications that are not well understood.
Here is an extract from the moving, honest book ‘Israel – what went wrong?’by Omer Bartov
When the first intifada, or uprising, broke out, in late 1987, I was teaching at Tel Aviv University. I was appalled by Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin’s instruction to the IDF to “break the arms and legs” of Palestinian youths who were throwing rocks at heavily armed troops. I wrote a letter to him warning that, based on my research on the indoctrination of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, I feared that under his leadership the IDF was heading down a similarly slippery slope. As my research had shown, young German men, even before their conscription, had internalized core elements of Nazi ideology, especially the view that the “subhuman” Slav masses, led by insidious Bolshevik Jews, were threatening Germany and the rest of the civilized world with destruction, and that therefore Germany had the right and duty to create for itself a “living space” in the East and to decimate or enslave that region’s population. This worldview was then further inculcated into the troops, so that by the time they marched into the Soviet Union, they perceived their enemies through that prism. The fierce resistance put up by the Red Army only confirmed the need to utterly destroy Soviet soldiers and civilians alike, most especially the Jews, who were seen as the main instigators of Bolshevism. The more destruction the German troops wrought, the more fearful they became of the revenge they could expect if their enemies prevailed. The result was the killing of up to twenty-seven million Soviet soldiers and citizens.
To my astonishment, a few days after writing to Rabin, I received a one-line response from him, chiding me for daring to compare the IDF to the German military. This gave me the opportunity to write him a more detailed letter, explaining my research and my anxiety about using the IDF as a tool of oppression against unarmed occupied civilians. Rabin responded again, with the same statement: “How dare you compare the IDF to the Wehrmacht.” In retrospect, I believe this exchange reveals something about his subsequent intellectual journey. For as we know from his later engagement in the Oslo peace process, however flawed, he did eventually recognize that in the long run Israel could not sustain the military, political, and moral price of the occupation.
And as Spain wins the World Cup, it is an opportunity to praise Spain for proving it is not expressing antisemitism when it speaks out against the genocide in Gaza:
The actor told Mehdi that it was important to be able to speak out against what he called the “genocide” in Gaza and the “war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu without being accused of, or engaging in, antisemitism. In fact, the conversation touched on everything from the “crazy impunity” enjoyed by Israel to the way in which Donald Trump and Javier Milei don’t represent their people to the ridiculously high ticket price at World Cup games in 2026.
support for Israel has often been framed within the context of shared democratic values and mutual interests in combating terrorism and promoting stability in the region.
Over the decades, the UK has maintained a complex relationship with Israel, balancing its support for Israel’s right to defend itself with the need to address Palestinian rights and aspirations. This balancing act has often placed the UK in a challenging position on the international stage, especially with regards to its relationships with Arab nations and its commitment to the peace process.
At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.
Buried in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948
Jewish voters who were already concerned about Zohran Mamdani’s attitude toward Israel have heightened anxiety after it was recently revealed that he said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” The statement has also renewed questions about the Israeli military’s relationship with police departments across the U.S.
![Israeli settlers at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on July 23 [File: Ilia Yefimovich /AFP]](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA28yJ9z.img?w=768&h=512&m=6 "Israeli settlers at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on July 23 [File: Ilia Yefimovich /AFP]")
![Daniel Siad's name appeared nearly 2,000 times in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice [File: Cristobal Herrara-Ulashkevich/EPA]](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1X2KBa.img?w=768&h=512&m=6&x=330&y=181&s=322&d=322 "Daniel Siad's name appeared nearly 2,000 times in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice [File: Cristobal Herrara-Ulashkevich/EPA]")
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