Apple holds talks with rival Meta

Lebanon Transport minister denies Hezbollah weapons at Beirut Airport

• Hamieh invited ambassadors and journalists to inspect the airport on Monday morning
• Cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel have escalated over the past two weeks

Beyond Nvidia: the search for AI’s next breakthrough

• Nvidia, which makes the processors that are the only option to train generative AI's large language models, is now Big Tech's newest member.
• Even tech's second rung on Wall Street has ridden on Nvidia's coattails with Oracle, Broadcom, HP and others seeing their stock valuations surge, despite sometimes shaky earnings.

Israeli forces tie wounded Palestinian to jeep in West Bank raid

• Medics identified the Palestinian as Mujahid Raed Abbadi, 24, who told AFP he lives in the Jenin refugee camp.
• Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, suggested the troops were using Abbadi to shield themselves from gunfire.

Egypt to prosecute travel agents over hajj ‘fraud’: government

• The order came after countries whose citizens performed this year's hajj reported more than 1,100 deaths, many attributed to the oven-like summer heat in Saudi Arabia
• An AFP tally on Friday, compiling official statements and reports from diplomats involved in the response, put the toll at 1,126, more than half of them from Egypt

Gaza health officials say 24 killed in Israeli strikes

• The Gaza City strikes added to at least 120 deaths over the previous 48 hours which the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported earlier Saturday
• Exchanges of fire across the Lebanese border between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed group Hezbollah have also escalated, raising fears of wider war

Arab-American mayor warns Biden has not ‘earned my vote’

• Hammoud's profile surged in January after he declined an invitation to meet with Biden campaign officials seeking to shore up the Muslim vote
• The son of Lebanese immigrants, Hammoud grew up in a "working poor" blue collar family and his father drove truck while his mother's father worked on an auto factory assembly line

UK’s richest family get jail terms for exploiting staff at Swiss villa

• The Hindujas were acquitted of human trafficking, but convicted on other charges in a stunning verdict for the family, whose fortune is estimated at 37 billion pounds
• Prakash Hinduja and his wife Kamal Hinduja each got four years and six months, while their son Ajay and his wife Namrata received four-year terms

Israeli strikes kill 5 Gaza municipal workers as fears grow of wider war

• Five municipal workers died "during an Israeli bombing" of a garage in Gaza City, said Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defense agency in the territory.
• The World Health Organization, said "we did not see an impact on the humanitarian supplies coming in" after Israel announces daily 'tactical pauses' for aid delivery.

Saudi official defends management of hajj after hundreds die

• He said the government had confirmed 577 deaths for the two busiest days of hajj: Saturday, when pilgrims gathered at Mount Arafat and Sunday in Mina for stoning ritual
• "This happened amid difficult weather conditions and a very harsh temperature," the official said, while acknowledging that the 577 figure was partial and did not cover all of hajj