News
Greek F-16 Fighter Jets Intercept Beirut-Bound MEA Flight
The Lebanese pilot is thought to have used an incorrect radio frequency — a major blunder from the son of the airline’s chairman.
A “Code Renegade” alert recently set Greek aviation authorities on high alert following a warning issued by a NATO air control center in Torrejón, Spain. Code Renegade is a distress signal typically used in a hijacking situation. In this case, the code was issued after a Middle Eastern Airlines (MEA) flight bound for Beirut failed to answer calls and went into complete radio silence.
After repeated attempts to speak to the aircraft’s captain, authorities began to worry about the plane’s safety status, which eventually caused Greek air defense to scramble two F-16 fighter jets from Souda to intercept the unresponsive civilian airliner over Argolida in the northeastern Peloponnese.
Lebanon-based aircraft tracker InterSky, took to Twitter to report the details of the unfolding situation:
“Code Renegade set Greek authorities on alert following a relevant signal by the NATO air control center in Spain (CAOC Torrejón), to intercept a non-responsive civil aircraft Airbus A321 with 145 passengers onboard that had taken off from Madrid and was bound for Beirut.”
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In a further twist to the story, contact was eventually reestablished with the aircraft, after which it was revealed that the MEA pilot, Abed Al-Hout, was the son of Mohammed Al-Hout, chairman of the board of directors of Middle East Airlines. The chairman has previously received criticism for employing relatives at various levels of the company, and in this instance, his son had failed to set the communication instruments to the correct frequency, resulting in radio silence.
The news is a further embarrassing blow for Middle East Airlines, which has recently lost over 20% of staff to other airlines, as Lebanon’s financial crisis continues to deepen.
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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