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Air Taxis Fly Over Jerusalem As Israel Creates Airspace Network
Demo flights of the Chinese-made Ehang two-seater air taxi have commenced from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital.
Israel has expanded air taxi test flights across urban areas of Jerusalem in preparation for a new drone delivery network of heavy cargo and passengers.
The demonstration, which showed how drones could ease congestion in the busy city, is part of a $15.7 million government pilot project known as the Israel National Drone Initiative (INDI).
The tests began with a half-hour flight of a long-distance Chinese-made electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) drone from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. The setting for the tests is significant, as the government plans to use the drones for life-saving missions, as well as cargo and passenger purposes.
“What we’re looking at here is how Israel’s National Drone Initiative is expanding its scope to move beyond transporting packages to transporting human beings,” explained Daniella Partem, senior director at the Israel Innovation Authority. “We are looking to improve the economic viability of this model and advance connectivity in urban areas and further afield around the world”.
The air taxi test was performed by Dronery, a subsidiary of the Israeli drone delivery fleet operator Cando Drones. The fully autonomous EH216 aircraft can carry a 250-kilogram payload for 30 kilometers using an intelligent command-and-control system that includes a real-time video feed.
“The possibility of flying the aerial taxi in the early stages within an urban area as complex as the Hadassah Medical Center is a practical realization of the Transportation Ministry’s belief [in smart transportation],” said Cando Drones CEO Yoeli Or. “Cando and Dronery are the first in Israel to bring and fly heavy drones capable of flying significant distances and carrying over 200 kilograms”.
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During a recent June demonstration, the startup AIR also tested its own all-electric eVTOL, known as AIR ONE. The craft features collapsible wings for easy storage and is marketed as an everyday alternative for short city commutes.
Other Israeli companies involved in the INDI project include Airwayz Drones, a provider of AI-based smart management systems for drone fleets; HighLander, which has developed a traffic management system for drones; and Robotican, a producer of ground and air-based autonomous robotic systems.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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